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Right-to-lifers are moving against abortion on other legal fronts. In Boston, for example, the anti-abortion movement has obtained indictments against three Boston researchers who used tissue from dead fetuses for research. The chief prosecutor in the Edelin trial, Newman Flanagan, now plans to turn his full attention to the case pending against the three. Activists in Long Island's Nassau County have prompted inquiries by both local and federal prosecutors into allegations that aborted live fetuses were allowed to die in the county medical center. Last week the center turned over to the district attorney all of its medical records for 89 fetuses aborted during January.
National Debate. Dr. Ryan of the Boston Hospital for Women hopes that the Edelin case will have an effect similar to that of the 1925 Scopes trial, at which the teaching of evolution was debated. Although Scopes was found guilty, the resulting public outcry led to a national debate that in turn eventually produced an enlightened consensus on evolution. Perhaps, says Ryan, the uproar over the Edelin verdict will help eventually to bring a reasonable accommodation among those who back abortion and those who oppose it. In the light of the strong passions that the issue arouses today, however, that would seem to be a forlorn hope.