Unborn

Washington. -- The most frightening entry on any ballot next Tuesday is no candidate, but something in Oregon called ''Measure 16.'' It will, in effect, erase the few safeguards that separate human life from all other living things.If Measure 16 passes, doctors would be protected by law when they offered lethal drugs to ''terminally ill'' patients. Supporters claim that enough ''safeguards'' are built in, such as second and third opinions, written requests for the drugs by the patient and testimonies from others -- including at least one non-family member -- that the request for immediate departure from this life is rational and sincere.

CHICAGO - One of the most dramatic medical advances of recent years has been the use of surgery to correct birth defects - before birth. Surgeons can operate on fetuses in the womb for a variety of conditions, from life-threatening tumors to spina bifida. When they operate, it may surprise you to learn, they provide anesthesia not only to the mother but also to the fetus. Or maybe it doesn't surprise you. Maybe it seems obvious that fetuses can feel pain long before they emerge into the world.

NEWTON, Mass. - An influential group of lay Catholics called last night for Boston Cardinal Bernard F. Law to resign on a day when more damaging revelations surfaced that church officials ignored or even hid allegations priests had abused children. Leaders of the Voice of the Faithful, a parish-based grassroots movement formed this year in response to the sexual abuse crisis, packed a suburban church here to vote on resolutions calling for Law's resignation and beseeching Pope John Paul II to appoint a "suitable person to this position."

When I woke up on Tuesday morning, I turned on a news broadcast just in time to find out about a 2-week-old baby girl who, along with her mother, had just been miraculously pulled out alive from the rubble of an apartment building destroyed by the 7.2 magnitude earthquake that struck near Ercus, Turkey. They had been buried under the debris for nearly 48 hours. The baby girl was identified as Azra Karaduman. In the background, you could see collapsed buildings and devastation everywhere.

A Waldorf man was ordered imprisoned for life Tuesday for trying to kill his pregnant girlfriend — a hairdresser who prosecutors said refused his demand to have an abortion — at her home in Crofton. "I got my early Christmas present," Jodi Torok said after seeing her former boyfriend, Charles Brandon Martin, sentenced to life in prison by an Anne Arundel County judge. "I believe you were willing to snuff both of them out because they were an inconvenience to you," Judge Pamela L. North told Martin, in a reference to Torok and her unborn child, before sentencing him. Prosecutors depicted Martin, 33, as a ruthless would-be killer and alleged two murder plots centered on him. They said another man, Jerold Raymond Burks, shot Torok in October 2008 to work off a $400 drug debt to Martin.

ARTIST MARK Hatfield and his wife, Hilary, are expecting their first child and, like many soon-to-be parents, they're picking names (Ethan Blake, if it's a boy, and Emma Blake, if it's a girl) and trying to make use of minimal space in their town home.He's painting the sky on the nursery ceiling, and she is making a quilt before the baby arrives in early October.It should be of little surprise that the child of an artist and the former executive director of the Carroll County Arts Council is also the inspiration of a series of abstract paintings by Mark at the cafP pangea in Baltimore.

The Maryland legislature recently voted to abolish capital punishment in the state, making Maryland the sixth state in the last six years to eliminate the death penalty. The primary argument for repealing the law is that our justice system is imperfect and it's possible an innocent person could be condemned. Indeed, anti-death penalty activists presented Kirk Bloodsworth, a former death-row inmate, convicted of the 1984 rape and murder of a 9-year-old girl. His conviction was overturned on appeal after the court found the prosecution had withheld exculpatory evidence from the defense.

Desperate to end her pregnancy after six months, Kawana Ashley put a pillow against her abdomen, picked up a pistol and shot herself. After an emergency delivery, her baby girl lived only 15 days. The 19-year-old Florida mother was charged with murder and manslaughter.The case, which goes before the Florida Supreme Court tomorrow, represents a collision that had long been looming, a direct clash of a woman's right to abortion and the developing legal rights of her fetus.The criminal prosecution of the St. Petersburg woman is one of a growing number of court cases taking the fetus closer and closer to having a complete legal identity of its own, with rights in conflict with those of the pregnant woman.

After hours of labor, Enso Martinez cried as his wife, Rebecca Fielding, was carried from their Waverly home on a stretcher en route to Johns Hopkins Hospital. Fielding, who had wanted to deliver her baby at home with the help of a midwife, assured her husband that everything would be OK. But she never expected to wait more than two hours for an emergency Caesarean section after being rushed to the hospital by ambulance that morning in March 2010. If a team of doctors and nurses had performed the surgery earlier, Martinez and Fielding contend, their son, Enzo, would now be a normal 2-year-old boy practicing new words and toddling across the floor.

KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- Jurors unanimously agreed yesterday that Lisa Montgomery should be put to death for killing Bobbie Jo Stinnett and stealing her unborn daughter nearly three years ago. Before the decision ending the four-week trial was announced yesterday afternoon, the federal judge ordered spectators to control their emotions or leave the Kansas City courtroom. People obeyed him, but Montgomery began shaking after she heard the verdict. Jurors, who deliberated about four hours over two days, declined to talk to reporters afterward.