Samuel Armas, a chattering, brown-eyed 3-year-old, has no idea what “fetus” means. Nor does he realize that he was one of the most celebrated in medical history. At a mere 21 weeks of gestational age—long before it was time to leave his mother’s womb—Samuel underwent a bold and experimental surgical procedure to close a hole at the bottom of his spinal cord, the telltale characteristic of myelomeningocele, or spina bifida. Samuel’s parents, Julie and Alex, could have terminated Julie’s pregnancy at 15 weeks when they learned about their son’s condition, which can result in lifelong physical and mental disabilities. But the Armases do not believe in abortion. Instead, in August 1999, they drove 250 miles from their home in Villa Rica, Ga., to Nashville, Tenn., where Dr. Joseph Bruner, of Vanderbilt University, performed a surgery bordering on the fantastical. Bruner cut into Julie’s abdomen, lifted her balloonlike uterus out of her body, made an incision in the taut muscle, removed the fetus, sewed up the spinal defect and tucked him back inside. Fifteen weeks later Samuel Armas “came out screaming,” says Julie.
Samuel Armas, at three-and-a-half, outside his home.
THAT SCREAM became a rallying cry for fetal-rights groups, which seized on a stunning photograph of Samuel’s tiny hand emerging from his mother’s uterus during surgery. Since then, anti-abortion activists have posted the image on dozens of Web sites to show just how real human fetuses are—even those that aren’t yet viable. And that’s just fine with the Armases. “We’re very glad it’s gotten visibility,” says Alex. “That wasn’t our fetus, that was Samuel.”
No matter what legislators, activists, judges or even individual Americans decide about fetal rights, medicine has already granted unborn babies a unique form of personhood—as patients. Twenty-five years ago scientists knew little about the molecular and genetic journey from embryo to full-term fetus. Today, thanks to the biomedical revolution, they are gaining vast new insights into development, even envisioning a day when gene therapy will fix defects in the womb. Technology is introducing parents to their unborn children before they can see their toes. Expecting couples can now have amazing 3-D ultra—sound prints made in chain stores like Fetal Fotos. “Instead of some mysterious thing inside her belly, a mother and her family can now identify a little human being,” says Bruner. In any other field of medicine, the impact of these dramatic improvements in treatment and technology would be limited largely to doctors, patients and their families. But 30 long and contentious years after Roe v. Wade, science that benefits fetuses cannot help but fuel ongoing political, moral and ethical debates.
This is a long article. Here's the link for the rest of it.
http://www.msnbc.com/news/920641.asp?0cb=-414159717
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