Life Links 2/27/13

TIME provides more information on the teenage couple in Texas who sued to prevent the young woman's parents from forcing her to have an abortion. 

The baby is due Sept. 16. According to Evan, he and R.E.K. — they began dating last summer — knew right away they would have the baby. "We've always been against abortion," says Evan, who wants to become a welder (R.E.K. wants to attend nursing school). "As soon as we found out she was pregnant, we knew we wanted to keep it."
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It remains to be seen just how involved the girl's parents will be with their new grandchild. While Burnside and her husband, who is not Evan's biological father, are being supportive, the girl's parents may find it harder to play a role: days after the judge's ruling, Evan, a high school sophomore, married his pregnant girlfriend, a junior, in what Burnside calls a "shotgun" wedding.

The BBC reports on the research of French scientists who have discovered that unborn children can decipher speech as early as 3 months before birth. 

The evidence comes from detailed brain scans of 12 infants born prematurely.

At just 28 weeks' gestation, the babies appeared to discriminate between different syllables like "ga" and "ba" as well as male and female voices.

Writing in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), the French team said it was unlikely the babies' experience outside the womb would have affected their findings.

A couple in Virginia have filed a $1.7 million lawsuit against Langley Air Force Base Hospital after the hospital allegedly misdiagnosed a healthy unborn child as a molar pregnancy and then aborted the child.

Heather Fergurson, 32, of Chesapeake, Va., filed the suit against the federal government this month, alleging hospital personnel performed a dilation and curettage procedure April 18, 2011, after medical staff misinterpreted ultrasound and other tests to conclude Fergurson had a molar pregnancy -- a rare mass inside the uterus that can change into a rapidly spreading cancer -- The (Norfolk) Virginian-Pilot reported Sunday.

Fergurson and her husband, Army Sgt. Maj. Charles Fergurson, 56, have been unable to conceive again, the newspaper said.

Governor Mike Beebe, a Democrat, vetoed Arkansas' 20-week fetal pain/abortion ban bill yesterday.  It appears the legislature has more than enough votes to override his veto.