I don't know about the drinking but whatever it was it worked!

There are lots of tests for viability. They just aren't terribly accurate, as I point out in numerous places down thread. At yet they are used clinically. As a midwife, I'm sure you've seen cases of IUGR where estimated fetal weight is used (as a surrogate marker for viability) to decide when to deliver. And, as lungs…

which, in the world of pregnancy, means 20 weeks and 1 day.

26 weeks 35 years ago! That's amazing! The 23 weekers are unimaginably small. They hardly look like babies.

And that is why these things should be decided by doctors, and biomedical ethics, and by the families themselves. Not by science illiterate lawmakers. It is far too complicated and variable of an issue to make sweeping pronouncements.

It varies NICU by NICU. At some hospitals they will. There have been documented cases of babies surviving who were born in the 22nd week.

Very true. I can't pubmed it at the moment, but there are tons and tons of articles on it. Nonetheless, when decisions need to be made about viability (again, having to do with when to deliver, not some crazy-ass abortion law) it's one thing that is used to help decide.

Nope, I can count on one hand the sites on which I read the comments. Otherwise, I spiral into deep depression at the state of humanity.

That's my point—that it is quite variable and there are many ways of estimating it for a particular pregnancy. Another point, however, is that from a medical (and not legal!) perspective, there is nobody who would consider 20 weeks viable.

Cool paper! I think it's because they're not doctors. I think it's because they are not at all actually concerned with viability. They just came up with something that sounded cool to them that makes it harder for women to have abortions. They do not care about the science.

She probably genuinely does.

I think part of it is her degree of self-congratulation, and especially her decision to try darkening her skin. Empathy is a great thing, but she's rather tone-deaf to the issues at hand.

If you read the linked npr article, it says that her clinic is using fetal size and weight as their "test." Other than gestational age, it's a pretty good metric. The npr article more fully explains that the issue is that the law left it so vague—"viability test," as if it is one, specific thing. It's really a lot of…

In 2015, if these experiments are useful in increasing political empathy, they are useful only to people who have a troublingly low level of it to begin with.

I agree. It's complete bullshit. I just wanted to point out that the issue here isn't that there aren't any tests for viability. The issue is that the best test for viability is gestational age, which they are ignoring, and that they didn't specify anything else, and that it's all insulting anyway because none of them…

There is no actual "proof" of viability, short of letting the baby be born and see if it lives. However, if, for instance, you have a fetus that is 22 weeks and weighs 300 grams (estimated), and a particular hospital's cutoff for viability/resuscitation is 23 weeks and 500 grams, then that fetus isn't viable. Fetal…

Viability by gestational age is a bit of a moving target. There isn't a complete consensus, and it's usually determined by a particular hospital. However, for most U.S. hospitals with high level NICUs, it's fair to say that the current standard for viability is 23-24 weeks. Some hospitals will try to resuscitate a…

I think these are brilliant choices. Choosing people who were unsuccessful in marriage as role models means a lot more business for the knot. Got to love the repeat customers!

I'm in the grays so probably this won't get read, but saying there is no test for viability isn't true (and I say this as a pro-choice doctor). There are lots of tests for viability, which routinely get used when a doctor is making the decision whether or not to deliver a preterm baby—for instance, in the case of…

I would like to preface this by saying I am 100% pro-choice. However, there is a lot of regional variation in how many later abortions are performed. Although most abortions (statistically) are first trimester, in some areas, like the hospital where I'm a doctor and where I did my training, there are also a…