"The complex issues concerning the right to life are explored with heartbreaking precision in Baby Doe. The ethical versus emotional rights of parents to deny life-saving surgery for a severely compromised newborn is beautifully rendered as agonizing choices are made. Taeusch has written a thoughtful, engrossing read."
--Gail Tsukiyama, author of The Color of Air and The Samurai's Garden.
“An unsparing look at what happens when emotion, ethics, and, above all, medical fallibility converge to determine a fragile newborn’s fate. Taeusch writes with the authority of an insider deeply knowledgeable in matters both clinical and of the heart.”
--Joan Leegant, author of Wherever You Go and An Hour in Paradise
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It’s 1984 and assistant professor Sophia Shulder finds herself unexpectedly pregnant.The day after she gives birth, she learns that her baby has serious internal deformities and Down syndrome. Risky surgery is urgently needed to save their baby’s life. Sophia is not sure whether that is best for her baby, or for herself. The hospital, threatened by the Reagan administration's new "Baby Doe" laws, launches legal proceedings to take custody of the baby away from the Shulders. Is a baby’s death ever preferable to life? Who decides?