We need not resolve the difficult question of when life begins. When those trained in the respective disciplines of medicine, philosophy and theology are unable to arrive at any consensus, the judiciary ... is not in a position to speculate as to the answer.
—U.S. Supreme Court, Jan. 22, 1973
Though a seven-man majority of the learned 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 of the edge off the conviction. Although he could have imprisoned Edelin for as long as 20 years, he gave the doctor a suspended one-year sentence and placed him on probation.
Edelin, confident that his conviction would be overturned, promptly returned to work as chief resident in obstetrics and gynecology (OBG) at Boston City
Hospital—where the obstetrics nursing staff had hung a banner reading: WELCOME HOME, DR. EDELIN. Nonetheless, the verdict had already sent a shock wave through hospital OBG services across the country and heated the simmering abortion controversy back to a full boil.
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.
Ample Margin. The same ruling, however, empowered the states to set safety standards for the more difficult and dangerous abortions during the second trimester. Of the 31 states that have already imposed standards, most permit abortion by choice only through the 20th week; after that, there must be clear medical evidence that the mother's life or health is endangered or that the baby will be irreparably defective.