Word: fetus
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There is the one about the drivers who sneak into the lane reserved for car pools by planting inflated dummies in the passenger seats. And the pregnant woman who successfully argued in court that she and her fetus were entitled to use the car-pool lane because they were separate persons. Then there are the days that live in legend -- like Oct. 29, 1986, when a single midafternoon accident on the San Diego Freeway spread gridlock along connecting freeways and surface streets from downtown Los Angeles to the San Fernando Valley, trapping tens of thousands of motorists for eight full...
...undergoes an abortion. Her decision to end the pregnancy so late most likely involves some kind of tragedy: the child she is carrying is seriously defective or perhaps she has learned that she has cancer and requires immediate treatment that would poison her child. Whatever the reason, the aborted fetus is just a few weeks younger than the preemie staffers are furiously working to save...
...juxtaposition of these two images has long preoccupied people on both sides of the abortion debate. If medicine can save the life of an immature fetus, how can society allow the termination of an advanced pregnancy? When does the constitutional obligation to protect a potential citizen begin? How are the fetus' interests weighed against the mother's right to liberty and privacy...
...Supreme Court attempted to address these questions in its landmark Roe v. Wade decision of 1973. The court's solution rested on the concept of viability, defined as the time the fetus is "potentially able to live outside the mother's womb albeit with artificial aid." Until that point, said the majority, a woman's decision to terminate a pregnancy was guaranteed by the privacy rights implicit in the 14th Amendment, which has been interpreted to include personal rights relating to marriage, procreation and contraception. But once viability occurs, the court ruled, a state may limit or proscribe abortion...
...risk brain hemorrhages if given such drugs. But should technology leap this hurdle, it could reduce the viability standard to an absurdity. Asks David Rothman, professor of social medicine at the Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons: "Are we then going to say to women, 'Either you keep the fetus inside of you, or we'll take it out and keep it alive ourselves...