Word: fetuses
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...argument over abortion will never be settled. The most effective course is to concentrate on 1) creating totally effective contraception and 2) developing neonatal care technology so that an embryo or fetus of any age could be nurtured outside the womb or even transferred to the uterus of a woman desiring a child...
...statutes and before the Massachusetts legislature's adoption of new laws in 1974, was demonstrably legal. Edelin was accused of causing death. Testimony before the grand jury that handed up the indictment, and during the trial, raised the question of whether the 20-to 24-week-old fetus might not have been legally alive after Edelin performed the hysterotomy, or "mini-caesarean section," that terminated the pregnancy. While the testimony failed to produce an answer, it did convince the jury of three women and nine men that Edelin should have done more to find out if the baby...
Nolen, who recognizes that the object of an abortion is to end a pregnancy rather than deliver a live fetus, understands the jury's action. "Life is life," he writes, "and as a doctor, I believe Edelin could and should have worked to sustain that brief life." Nolen believes that Ede lin was guilty of manslaughter. But he admits that he could not have voted to convict. There was, he insists, reasonable doubt as to the baby's ever having been alive outside the uterus, and the doctor should have been given the benefit of this doubt. Says...
...using a common method of feeling its pulse. But his key defense was that the baby was never really alive outside the uterus and that no doctor could have saved it. After hearing 13 weeks of conflicting testimony, the jury had to decide whether "Baby Girl Weaver," as the fetus was known, was ever legally alive outside her mother's womb, and whether the actions (or inactions) of Dr. Waddill led to her death...
Foreman Thomas says the jurors agreed early that the fetus was alive when it was born. They were using a definition of death jointly formulated by the judge, prosecutors and defenders, along the lines of one used by the World Health Organization: "The permanent disappearance of all vital signs." By this definition, the fetus had been alive, since the nurses testified that it had gasped for breath and had a heartbeat. But the jury split widely on the question of Waddill's culpability, with two strongly for acquittal, two strongly for conviction, and the rest unsure. Then...