Word: fetuses
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Book of Genesis had it wrong. In the beginning God created Eve," says Johns Hopkins Medical Psychologist John Money. What he means is that the basic tendency of the human fetus is to develop as a female. If the genes order the gonads to become testicles and put out the male hormone androgen, the embryo will turn into a boy; otherwise it becomes a girl. "You have to add something to get a male," Money notes. "Nature's first intention is to create a female...
Physical differences appear even before birth. The heart of the female fetus often beats faster, and girls develop more rapidly. "Physiologically," says Sociologist Barbette Blackington, "women are better-made animals." Males do have more strength and endurance-though that hardly matters in a technological society...
Recent research hints that there may even be sex differences in the brain. According to some experimenters, the presence of the male hormone testosterone in the fetus may "masculinize" the brain, organizing the fetal nerve centers in characteristic ways. This possible "sex typing" of the central nervous system before birth may make men and women respond differently to incoming stimuli, Sociologist John Gagnon believes...
...core of the argument against anti-abortion laws is that every woman has a fundamental right to decide what happens to her own body, at least until after the quickening of the fetus. In recent years a few courts have given a sympathetic hearing to this argument, but legal reformers have kept trying to get a clear-cut judicial declaration that women are constitutionally entitled to a freedom of medical choice. Last week a three-judge federal court sitting in New Jersey provided exactly that...
Hopeful that a similar operation could help Maggie, Ammann took advantage of California's liberalized abortion law to search for an appropriate fetal thymus. The task proved difficult. For best results, Ammann needed a transplant from a healthy fetus 14 to 20 weeks old. These are rare because most California abortions are performed before the twelfth week of pregnancy. But in December, Ammann found a woman who was having a late abortion on psychiatric grounds and got permission to use the fetus' thymus...