Word: fetuses
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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According to the original trial judge, James P. Maguire, only proof that the fetus ever lived outside the mother's body would have legally constituted birth and subjected Edelin to a possible manslaughter conviction. But from the beginning the prosecution's case to prove a live birth rested on a confusing and contradictory welter of evidence. Both at the trial and at the appeal last April, Assistant District Attorney Newman A. Flanagan drowned his argument in emotionalism. Flanagan could not refute the overwhelming evidence that the fetus never lived outside the mother's womb, but he could shout...
...rejecting Flanagan's plea, the majority opinion has thwarted an ugly attempt to limit the definition of a legal abortion. But in writing in an additional majority statement arguing that Edelin, as long as he did not cause its death, could not be held liable even had the fetus lived and then died, three of the justices have gone a step further: they have offered protection to doctors who perform abortions in the future. Justices Kaplan, Braucher and Wilkins recognized that when a 17-year-old woman entered Boston City Hospital in late September 1973 requesting an abortion, Edelin observed...
...original charge was that the manslaughter and death occurred at a point when the fetus was still within the mother's body rather than, as the story puts it, when it "was still alive outside its mother's body." The change was to prove that Dr. Edelin acted wantonly and recklessly after a live fetus (baby) was delivered outside the mother's body...
...McGuire did not instruct "that a body is only alive if it shows a steady heartbeat and respiration outside the mother's body." The Supreme Judicial Court, speaking through Justice Kaplan, stated this in substance as a standard which should have been applied in determining whether or not the fetus (baby) was born alive...
Homans said that there was insufficient evidence to prove that the fetus was alive after the abortion. During the trial, the defense argued that the fetus was probably dead before Edelin began the hysterotomy operation, as a result of three previous attempts to abort the fetus by saline solution...