THE EDELIN DECISION:

...Frankly, it is a source of wonder that so many otherwise fairly rational people have found counsel and sustainment in such a position...

...Finally, and most significantly, it appears that the doctor did nothing which exceeded the bounds of accepted medical practice in cases of this sort...

...So why did the jury insist upon imperiling the man's career by returning a verdict of guilty...

...The jury was shown pictures of a fetus at the 20-24 week stage, and to them, it looked like a very human baby, in other words, a person...

...In essence, the Court has said that there is a point in time, prior to which the developing organism is non-human or perhaps pre-human, and after which it is suddenly invested with humanity and all the rights and privileges attendant thereon...

...Technically speaking, "viability" refers to the ability of the fetus to live independently of its mother, supposedly after 24-28 weeks of gestation...

...When a late-stage abortion results in the delivery of a living child with a long-shot chance at ultimate survival, the situation is, at best, embarrassing...

...If the above haggling is confusing to even the trained ethical and legal mind, why then, did the jury so facilely find Dr...

...It is only unavoidable guilt which can preserve a man from moral decay...

...Likewise, not that many pro-abortionists are willing to trace their logic to its ultimate conclusion...

...Perhaps not, unless one is a total and complete pacifist...

...For such an unfortunate situation still does not take precedence over whether the fetus has any right to life...

...First of all, conflicting testimony and honest differences of professional opinion rendered the evidence less than absolutely conclusive...

...In theory, it is at best a fairly arbitrary determination of the beginning of human life...

...The whole point of an abortion is to assure that a given pregnancy does not produce a living offspring...

...Secondly, the judge's instructions to the jury all but mandated a "not guilty" verdict, and the subsequent imposition of the most minimal sentence possible made it clear where the judge's sentiments lay...

...For if the fetus, up to the time of so-called viability has no rights at all, then neither do those creatures have any rights who are not viable because of old age, illness, or mental deformity, such as the aforementioned schizophrenic...

...Pro-abortion forces have consistently maintained that there is no way to determine when human life begins, and that in the absence of a definitive proof of human percarol altekruse berger & Patrick f. berger team-teach medical ethics at the Metropolitan College of St...

...When does human life begin...

...And so, Dr...

...At its worst, it leaves the doctor in a limbo zone, with no clear-cut guides regarding his obligation (or lack of it) to his new "patient," if indeed the aborted fetus qualifies as a patient/person at all...

...On the one hand, pro-abortionists may have to concede that the fetus is human and therefore has some rights, just as the mother has some rights...

...In practice, "viability" is almost as elusive a quality as "humanity...

...according to the other, it was not...

...and sometimes we do opt, as the lesser of two evils, to choose one life over another.ne life over another...

...Louis University...

...Once fertilization has taken place, the unique genetic code has been set...

...Kenneth Edelin by a Boston jury in the death of a 20- to 24-week old black male fetus was surprising on several counts...

...Does such a conclusion mean that abortions are immoral and thus illegal...

...So where does the Edelin Decision leave us...

...sonhood in the fetus, the presumption must be made that the product of conception is simply extraneous tissue until such time as it becomes "viable...

...And that each person must step by step in life settle conflicts, insoluble theoretically, by his own free sense of values and his own creative energy, should be regarded as a feature of the highest spiritual significance in complete humanity and genuine freedom...

...The answer, it seems, lies in the photographs...

...Pro-abortionists will argue that such a speck cannot that early in the process be human because it does not have personhood, especially as described by the eminent medical ethician, Joseph Fletcher...

...Edelin guilty...

...They too would lose their personhood status...

...Thus the problem with taking an absolute stand of never on the abortion question then sets the standard of never taking a human life...

...If so, and such a criterion is adopted for person-hood, then what about those who exist outside the womb but who do not relate to society: the idiot, the schizophrenic, the socially maladjusted...

...And it seems entirely reasonable that in the presence of doubt, one ought to exercise extreme caution...

...If one cannot be sure that the fetus is human, one must be equally unsure that it is not...

...For even aspirin can be harmful to a fetus...

...whose very existence depends upon the availability of maintenance drugs and therapies such as insulin...

...According to Fletcher, a person must be able to relate, to think and to be socially visible...

...Given those two premises, is it any wonder that the fine art of legalistic haggling sezms destined to be carried to new and greater heights...

...With the advent of the artificial womb and growing talk of test-tube babies, we may well be entering an era in which the product of conception can be brought to maturity independent of the mother, even if it is aborted at an extremely early stage-provided those into whose care the aborted fetus falls are willing to employ all of the sophisticated techniques at their disposal to save it...

...First of all, it must be conceded that there are two ways to go from the premise that one cannot determine the exact moment of an organism's emergency into a human existence...

...But from a medical point of view, there are numerous adult human beings (proof: they hold jobs, vote, raise children, etc...

...Absolute Stands Perhaps the problem of the all-or-nothing approach which both camps seem to display lies in our general reaction to difficult moral issues...

...Edelin reportedly detached the infant from the maternal support system (the prosecution's definition of "birth") but deliberately refrained from removing the child from the uterine cavity (the definition of birth preferred by the defense) for a sufficient period of time that there would be no possibility of spontaneous respiration...

...But rarely is this the case, as the philosopher Nicolai Hartmann has noted in his writings on the nature of ethical decisions...

...The jury in Boston was left to determine what the Supreme Court itself elected to consign to the realm of the unanswerable: "When does human life begin...

...In the Edelin case, for instance, a substantial part of the controversy surrounded the precise meaning of the expression "to be born...

...This is true of every abortion, simply by definition, regardless of the underlying motivation on the part of the woman who seeks it...

...He notes: Real moral life is not such that one can stand guiltless in it...

...On the other hand, anti-abortionist forces may finally be forced to deal with the problem of the unwanted child and turn their energies to the protection and education of those children and not just the fetus...

...Edelin had a legal and moral obligation to keep the fetus alive...

...But some severe adjustments will have to be made by both sides...

...But having posited the existence of such a point in time, the Court goes on to say that it cannot be determined when that point occurs...

...When does a genetic code becomes a person...

...According to one side, the child was "born," therefore human...

...Some of the jury members might have been impressed with the prosecution's contention that the right to abortion means only the termination of the pregnancy and does not necessarily imply the death of the fetus-and that therefore, Dr...

...What the Edelin verdict will do, hopefully, is to force both sides to reexamine their positions very carefully and do some hard thinking about when humanity begins and the consequent rights of the fetus and about the realization that we in fact do make difficult decisions regarding the taking of human life...

...Pro-abortion theory unaccountably chooses to draw the opposite conclusion, when it lobbies for abortion under circumstances which do not represent a clear threat to the life of the mother...

...At the moment in a no-man's land between two absolutists' positions: abortion is never justified versus abortion-on-demand...

...Secondly, the whole question of "viability" is extremely ambiguous...

...What then is a human being...

...the fetus must have "some" rights...

...What all this points to is the absurdity of trying to define humanity under the essentially faulty guidelines set up by the Supreme Court...

...Yet one must not make of this a comfortable theory, as the vulgar mind makes of the permissible lie, imagining that one brings upon oneself no guilt in offending against clearly discerned values...

...If there is no way that I can determine whether the area into which I propose shooting a rifle is free of human traffic (although there is at least a 50-50 chance that it is) then common sense dictates that I refrain from shooting...

...Yet if ever there was an instance of hairsplitting, surely this would be it...

...And the end result of this process that has begun is a human being, not a monkey or rabbit or Yahoo, but a human being...

...Edelin was found guilty, even if legally, he may not have been...

...The more fundamental question that now has to be asked is whether "that which has been, conceived by hum?n beings is human...

...If it was a human being, the conclusion was inescapable in the moral and philosophic terms as understood in the broad spectrum of Western ethics...

...And few, if any Christians, are willing to say that such is the case and draw this conclusion, especially with the various just-war theories, unjust-aggressor doctrines, and capital-punishment legislation being currently backed by Christians, and Catholics especially...

...At the other end of the spectrum, what anti-abortionist forces may have to concede is that there may be cases where abortion is the lesser of two evils, especially where there is definite danger to the mother (rare nowadays) or where severe damage has occurred to the fetus because of an accident, such as an automobile crash or a harmful reaction to a drug...

...The crux of the problem may be that we all tend to think of moral decisions as being either all right or all wrong...

...On the other hand, pro-abortionists who take an absolute stand of abortion-on-demand and claim that the decision is totally up to the mother and that the fetus has no rights whatsoever will have to take another look at the question of the nature of humanhood and personhood and the definition of humanity...

...The only answer must be is "that which has been conceived by human beings is human," and those who cannot speak for themselves deserve more protection under the law than those who can lobby and make loud noises for their personal interest groups...

...In addition, to raise emotional arguments about battered babies or unwanted children, as pro-abortionists do, is to beg the question...

...Ludicrous, yes...

...Edelin's statement after the trial that he felt no guilt either morally or legally is just as self-serving and self-righteous as the more militant pro-life people who cry "Adoption not Abortion" but who would never think personally of adopting, especially the severely brain-damaged child or fetus...

...If in the course of performing a legal abortion by hysterotomy (a procedure closely resembling the better publicized Caesarean sectioning of a full-term child), the doctor took steps to prevent spontaneous respiration on the part of the unwanted fetus, wherein lies the malfeasance...

...The black, for instance, was segregated totally, and thus was not visible and certainly had no rights, either in the legal or the human sense, as evidenced by the scathing indictment in the literary masterpiece of Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man...

...In fact, it was reported that during the Edelin trial, one doctor, testifying for the defense, expressed the opinion that viability occurs only after the child is discharged from the hospital...

...And even after normal, full-term parturition, human infants are scarcely capable of survival independent of a mother or mother-substitute who assumes the responsibility of feeding, clothing and protecting it...

...As for visibility as a norm for humanhood, we only have to remember that just such a principle was used to deny personhood to various minority groups throughout history...

...As such, these people are not "viable" independent of an increasingly complex health-delivery system...

...In the course of the hysterotomy under contention, Dr...