Life Links 8/22/11

Thomas Stevens is hoping the Kentucky Supreme Court will hear his case and award damages for the death of his unborn grandson.

Fourteen weeks pregnant, Desiree Amber Stevens was heading east on Ky. 52 in Estill County on Aug. 16, 2008, when another driver tried to cross the highway in front of her, causing a horrific crash that killed Stevens and her unborn child.

The other driver, Gina Flynn, and Stevens' insurance carrier, Progressive Direct, settled a wrongful death suit for an undisclosed amount that was filed by Thomas A. Stevens on his 24-year-old daughter's behalf.

But Flynn and Progressive refused to pay a penny for the wrongful death of Stevens' unborn grandson — and Circuit Judge Thomas Jones said they didn't have to.

The Joplin Globe has the story of a pregnant mother who, along with her unborn child, survived the tornado that hit Joplin.

As daylight peeked through the twisted remains of the store, Morris could see that Rodgers was bearing the brunt of the pressure.

She had learned about six weeks earlier that she was pregnant.

When he saw her awkward position under the weight of the collapsed store walls, "I was thinking about the baby but I wasn't going to say that to her," Morris said. "I wanted her thinking of her life."
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Martin said it was a difficult rescue because the jack used to lift the rubble, called a portable ram, was nearly overburdened. Every step the firefighters took in the debris pushed harder on Rodgers.

"I would say she had well over a ton on her back," Martin said. "Our machines almost wouldn't lift it." The jack stalled once, straining against the weight, and then moved again.......

During her tests, an ultrasound was done and the technologist asked her father, "How would you like to be a Granddad?"

The baby was alive.

The New York Times covers the early testing to determine a fetus's sex.

"I think over the long run this has the potential of changing attitudes toward pregnancy and to family," said Audrey R. Chapman, a bioethicist at the University of Connecticut Health Center. "Women may be less invested in their pregnancies earlier than they are later, and the question has been raised whether women will look at their pregnancies increasingly as being conditional: ‘I will keep this pregnancy only if.' "

Fetal sex tests have a few medical applications, allowing couples with histories of rare sex-linked disorders to avoid costly and invasive genetic testing if they learn they are expecting the other sex. But for most couples, the tests, which are unregulated, simply answer the boy-or-girl question weeks earlier than ultrasound, and in a less invasive and safer way than amniocentesis.

Margaret Somerville comments on "deselecting our children."

Here's a recent Danish headline: "Plans to make Denmark a Down syndrome-free perfect society." The Danes want to promote aborting fetuses with Down syndrome, so their society will be free of such people around 2030. One bioethicist describes it as a "fantastic achievement."

At least the Danes are raising this issue. In North America, it's estimated that more than 90 per cent of unborn babies with Down syndrome are aborted.