Pickled Roe

The Baby in the Bottle By William A. Nolen Coward, McCann, 253 pp., $8.95 A desperately fair-minded book, this: a review of, and rumination on, the Edelin case. Dr. Kenneth Edelin, it will be recalled, was the physician who tried to perform an abortion and wound up the defendant in a sensational manslaughter case in Boston a few years ago. Naturally, he became a symbol, as pro-abortion forces rallied to his support, and anti-abortionists recoiled.

Midway through the abortion, Edelin apparently found not only that the child had survived his saline injection, but that he—the boy—was further along than had been thought: nearly six months. The child might have lived. Did Edelin reach into the uterus and suffocate him? That became the legal question. The jury convicted him. The Massachusetts Supreme Court overturned the conviction.

JS

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Joseph Sobran

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The Baby in the Bottle By William A. Nolen Coward, McCann, 253 pp., $8.95 A desperately fair-minded book, this: a review of, and rumination on, the Edelin case. Dr. Kenneth Edelin, it will be recalled, was the physician who tried to perform an abortion and wound up the defendant in a sensational manslaughter case in Boston a few years ago. Naturally, he became a symbol, as pro-abortion forces rallied to his support, and anti-abortionists recoiled.

Midway through the abortion, Edelin apparently found not only that the child had survived his saline injection, but that he—the boy—was further along than had been thought: nearly six months. The child might have lived. Did Edelin reach into the uterus and suffocate him? That became the legal question. The jury convicted him. The Massachusetts Supreme Court overturned the conviction.