Fetuses

A developing fetus may signal when it is ready to be born by releasing a chemical produced by the lungs, according to a new study by U.S. researchers. The study, done in mice, suggests that in mammals, readiness to breathe outside the mother's womb might be the main factor in determining when it is time to be born. Writing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Dr.

WASHINGTON - An antiabortion protester who won the right to display pictures of aborted fetuses at a busy intersection can collect lawyers' fees from local officials, the Supreme Court ruled Monday. The justices said that because a South Carolina antiabortion activist had a free-speech right to display photos of aborted fetuses even though they shocked some motorists, he could also claim his legal fees under civil rights law after his rights were upheld in court. Although the ruling concerned only legal fees, it probably will strengthen the hand of abortion protesters who clash with police or city officials.

A prosecutor in Belleville said he would seek the death penalty against a woman accused of cutting a fetus from a friend's womb, killing both. Authorities say Tiffany Hall, 24, also confessed to killing her friend's three children. St. Clair County State's Atty. Robert Haida said he is preparing a case on those deaths for a grand jury. Hall is charged with first-degree murder in the death of Jimella Tunstall, 23, and of intentional homicide of an unborn child. Hall has pleaded not guilty.

WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court ruled Monday that an antiabortion protester who won the right to carry displays of aborted fetuses at a busy intersection is a civil rights advocate entitled to claim attorneys' fees in his case against a local government. The justices in an unsigned opinion said that because the South Carolina antiabortion activist had a free-speech right to "carry pictures of aborted fetuses" that had shocked bystanders, he also had the right under the Civil Rights Act to claim legal fees for vindicating this right in the courts.

I cannot believe The Times printed the article, "Marines Say They Were Misled on Fetus Burial Role," without considering that the burial of 16,000 fetuses might be more journalistically important than whether three Marines were "misled" into attending the service. Whether or not the Marines were improperly led to the service is insignificant in comparison to the mass burial of 16,000 fetuses, who, regardless of our views on abortion, would be alive today if they had not been aborted.

The release of 54 fetuses by the county coroner's office to an ecumenical group that planned to bury them Sunday was protested Friday as a violation of the separation of church and state. The American Civil Liberties Union argued that the coroner had no right to release the fetuses "for the express purpose of holding religious services." The fetuses were found abandoned alongside California 71 in Chino Hills last year.

A Texas couple who described themselves as anti-abortion told congressmen Monday, in often emotional testimony, why they decided to undergo a fetus-to-fetus tissue transplant in attempting to save their unborn child. "We do not agree with abortion," said the Rev. Guy Walden, a Baptist minister from Houston, his voice breaking at times. But "we believed that . . . this would be consistent with a pro-life, anti-abortion position." Theirs was the first public report of such surgery.

Autopsy results released Monday conclude that a fetus found in a toilet by a plumber responding to the report of a blocked commode was stillborn. "The mother probably will not be charged," Sheriff's Lt. Ron Wilkerson said. "At this point, it doesn't look like there was any crime committed." The 18- to 20-week-old fetus was found about 4 p.m. Sunday in an apartment building in the 8200 block of Chapman Avenue, Wilkerson said.

A woman was convicted Wednesday and sentenced to 12 years in prison for killing her unborn child by using crack cocaine during her pregnancy. The verdict marks the first time that anyone in the United States has been found guilty of homicide for taking drugs during pregnancy, said an advocate for the defendant, Regina McKnight. A jury found McKnight, 24, guilty after deliberating for 15 minutes. She could have faced a life sentence. McKnight's lawyers said they will appeal.

A judge has upheld murder charges against a woman accused of killing the fetus of a romantic rival, rejecting defense arguments that the state's fetal homicide law conflicts with abortion rights. Corinne Wilcott had argued that she couldn't be charged with murder if the state didn't consider the fetus to be a person. But Erie County Judge John Trucilla ruled that although a pregnant woman can choose to have an abortion, she has no choice in an attack that kills her fetus.

How long will it be before prenatal care involves sequencing the genome of a fetus to detect genetic disorders before birth? Several recent reports have shown it can be done, based on the tiny bits of DNA that float around in the mother-to-be's blood plasma during pregnancy. Another such study came out this week in the journal Nature -- with some important advances. In the past, fetal-genome analyses have involved getting samples of DNA from three places: the woman's blood cells (to identify her genome)

POCATELLO, Idaho - When Pocatello police got a tip that Jennie Linn McCormack had ended her pregnancy by taking an abortion drug obtained over the Internet, they showed up at her apartment one cold January day in 2011 and demanded an explanation. McCormack eventually took them out to her back porch, where the remains of her fetus were on the barbecue, wrapped up in a plastic bag and a cardboard box. "My baby is in the box," McCormack said. Officers uncovered the frozen remains of a 5-month-old fetus and erected crime scene tape around the porch before taking her to the police station and charging her with a felony.

Scientists have pieced together the entire DNA sequence of an 18-week-old fetus without having to use any invasive tests that could result in a miscarriage - an advance that offers a glimpse of the future of prenatal testing. Using blood drawn from the mother and a sample of saliva from the father, the researchers were able to scan the fetus' genome and determine whether it contained any of the myriad single-letter changes in the DNA code that can cause a genetic disorder. They could even pinpoint which mutations were inherited from Mom, which came from Dad, and which were brand-new.

A San Bernardino County man accused in the beating death of his pregnant girlfriend was arrested after a post appeared on his Facebook page implying that her death was an accident. Willie Davis Hines Jr., 23, was booked into the San Bernardino County Central Detention Center on two counts of murder in connection with the death of Tatjana Cruz, 24, and the fetus she was carrying, the San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department said Tuesday. He was being held without bail. Hines allegedly beat Cruz after a dispute, authorities said.

Plesiosaurs — giant marine reptiles that ruled the oceans 75 million years ago — gave birth to single large babies and may even have nurtured their young, according to a new study. F. Robin O'Keefe, a paleontologist at Marshall University in Huntington, W.Va., and Luis Chiappe, director of the Dinosaur Institute at the Natural History Museum in Los Angeles, teamed up to study the only known fossil of a plesiosaur mother and her unborn baby. The ancient relic is considered the first evidence that these aquatic behemoths gave birth in the water instead of laying eggs on land, the researchers reported online Thursday in the journal Science.

Women may soon be able to find out very early in their pregnancies whether they are carrying a fetus with Down syndrome by offering a simple blood sample. The safe, noninvasive test would pose fewer risks to the mother and fetus than amniocentesis or chorionic villus sampling (CVS), the two tests currently used for prenatal diagnosis. It would also give women more time to decide what to do if a diagnosis of Down syndrome is made. Researchers from the Chinese University of Hong Kong have been working on the DNA-based test for a decade.

Pregnant women are warned off cigarettes and alcohol to safeguard the health of their fetuses. But a new study identifies 163 environmental chemicals -- such as PCBs and even the long-banned DDT -- that pregnant women might be carrying along with their fetuses. A team at UC San Francisco examined data from 268 pregnant women and found the presence of a wide range of chemicals linked to pesticides, flame retardants and epoxy resins in their bodies. The findings released Friday were based on 2003-04 data and published in Environmental Health Perspectives.

Researchers have found a way to collect and decode the complete DNA sequence of a fetus by piecing it together using a sample of its mother's blood. The discovery, reported online Wednesday in the journal Science Translational Medicine, could present a safer alternative to the invasive procedures currently used to detect genetic problems in fetuses, experts said. Amniocentesis and chorionic villus sampling carry a small but real risk of miscarriage and are generally reserved for cases when the risk of a genetic defect is elevated.