Word: fetuses
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Justices of the Supreme Court of the U.S. shrank with becoming modesty from this speculation, the jury of laymen that convicted Dr. Kenneth Edelin in a Boston criminal court (TIME, Feb. 24) showed no such restraint. Its verdict-guilty of manslaughter-was reached after the jury decided that a fetus aborted by the obstetrician more than a year earlier had been, in fact, a living baby. Last week Judge James P. McGuire, who in his charge to the jury had declared that "a fetus is not a person and therefore not a subject for an indictment for manslaughter," took some...
Edelin's conviction, which resulted from the abortion of a 20-or 22-week-old fetus, should have no direct effect on a woman's right to elect an abortion in the first trimester (three months) of pregnancy-within 14 weeks after the last menstrual period. Abortions at this stage are relatively simple, virtually bloodless procedures; they account for about 800,000 of the 900,000 legal abortions now performed annually in the U.S. Under the 1973 Supreme Court ruling, first-trimester abortions are essentially free of regulation but must be performed by a licensed physician...
That limit would seem to provide obstetricians with an ample safety margin. Although an 18-week fetus (see cut) looks like a baby and can suck its thumb, the chance of survival for any fetus less than 24 weeks old and weighing an average 630 gm. (about 1% Ibs.) is slim. (Edelin's abortion produced a fetus of 600 gm. after a gestation that he had estimated at about 20 weeks.) Between 24 and 28 weeks is a gray zone in which few fetuses attain the weight or organ development needed to survive outside the womb. It is only...
...such conflicts, many observers expected the trial to end in Edelin's acquittal. The verdict, which stunned the courtroom and which Edelin will appeal, thus breaks new ground in the continuing debate concerning abortion. By finding him guilty of manslaughter, the jury decided, in effect, that a fetus approaching viability is a person and, as such, is entitled to the full protection...
...implications of this ruling are enormous. Doctors will probably continue to perform early abortions when there is no question about a fetus' inability to survive outside the womb. But, fearful of sharing Edelin's fate, they may be less likely to take a chance on late-term abortions. The Boston decision is likely to please antiabortionists, who have been trying for nearly two years to overturn or circumvent the Supreme Court's decision. But it may well work untold hardship for thousands of unhappily pregnant women, who may now find that although late abortions are technically legal...