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This isn't quite the same situation but a cousin of mine was pregnant with twins and also had one twin that was taking all of the nutrients. The other twin ended up passing away naturally and I guess her body just absorbed the baby. So she didn't need to go on bed rest or anything. Actually... she had been having a really really hard time with her pregnancy and she never felt right. After she lost the second twin she felt much better and had a really smooth pregnancy with a very healthy baby. So as much as it was really sad for her, she also felt like it was the right thing and it was meant to happen.

Never heard of this, but wishing her all the best

the blog http://fromaspeck.wordpress.com is a blog about a woman who was pregnant with twins and who had to really consider the procedure. She ultimately didn't do it, but there might be some info there for your friend.

That's my blog actually.
I am a bit confused though. Do you know if the twins are mono-mono or mono-di? If they're mono-mono, they share the same placenta and share the same amniotic sac. If mono-di, they share a placenta but have separate sacs.
If they're mono-mono, I'm not sure why they'd do an amnio reduction because that would affect both babies.

Have they mentioned TTTS (twin to twin tranfusion syndrome)? This is when one twin is a donor and provides more nutrients to the other twin. In this case, one twin will frequently have a larger amniontic sac than the other (I haven't heard of mono-mono twins getting TTTS).

As far as what may happen at 17 weeks, it depends. In my case, if my small twin passed at that point, my other twin may not have been affected b/c the small one was sooooo small. the further along I got, the more risk to the other twin: death for him or neurological damage. So we were always weighing a lot of options.

Let me know if you have any questions!

@sandsandmore: I hope you don't mind me recommending your blog. I thought that had been something that you'd mentioned, but wasn't positive.

@artbee: I'm not surprised she doesn't want to talk about it, she probably wants to simply cry. I will say that the babies do have quite a large size difference. But there's really no telling yet what might happen. I have a friend who had identical girls and they were born almost 1.5 pound apart. My boys had a 64% size discordance.