Medicine: Abortion: The Edelin Shock Wave

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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 at 28 weeks or later —when a fetus usually weighs at least 2 Ibs.—that it has a fair chance of survival and should not be aborted except for the most extreme circumstances. Despite the clearly established medical facts, the legal status of second-trimester abortions—at least in the view of some hospital administrators—has become clouded. Largely as a result of the Edelin verdict, Vanderbilt University Hospital in Nashville, Hutzel Hospital in Detroit and Western Pennsylvania Hospital in Pittsburgh, among others, have imposed twelve-to 16-week limits on abortions.

Others, particularly Boston's famed medical community, have staunchly stood their ground. Boston City Hospital issued a "statement of support" and called Edelin "an outstanding physician whose professional performance has been and continues to be at the highest level... consistent with the highest prevailing standards of medical care, and we strongly reaffirm his continuing staff appointment." The hospital does not intend to change its abortion regulations. At Boston's Beth Israel Hospital, Dr. Louis Burke, head of OBG, declared: "I think it's a travesty of justice. This man was working in the context of the Supreme Court guidelines."

Dr. Kenneth J. Ryan, chief of staff at the Boston Hospital for Women, pointed out that the hospital's approach to 20-to 24-week abortions would remain the same: careful, requiring more medical consultations than usual, and often using religious counseling. At the New Orleans meeting of the Association of Professors of Gynecology and Obstetrics last week, Ryan drafted a resolution, approved by 225 members, that declared: "The adversary system of the criminal courts is not the place to define abortion, to define viability or to define the moral issues of abortion. We must guard against local jurisdictions or vocal minorities imposing their ethical positions for medical care in family planning and abortion on patients or doctors who do not hold those positions." This was obviously a reference to the composition of the Boston jury that convicted Dr. Edelin: ten of the twelve jurors were Roman Catholics, and the Catholic Church, though far from being alone in its opposition to abortion, is certainly the most vocal foe of the practice.