THE EDELIN TRIAL

To the Editors of The Crimson:

I have read with interest your coverage of the Edelin trial in the past few weeks. What has interested me most however has not been the "tightly written, well-researched prose that has made The Crimson the most-quoted college newspaper in America." Rather, it has been with the fascinating new technique you have dredged up of distorting the facts to produce a lopsided picture of the situation: misusing words, leaving the prosecutor's testimony until the end of the trial, giving long soul-searching articles on the tragedy of Dr. Edelin. These do not seem to me to be in the best of journalistic traditions. Unfortunately, many of my friends have told me that this is now your "tradition." Nowhere was this more apparent than in your Extra Issue of Saturday. February 15 announcing the guilty verdict in the trial.

The headline itself is a misrepresentation of the true situation. To announce that Edelin was guilty for an "abortion" is false. If an abortion had been committed, and if the jury had found it as such then under present law he would have been acquitted. Instead, the jury found that there was a chance that the fetus was viable that it was alive outside of the uterus. It further determined that through "negligence" Edelin had allowed the baby to die. That is the crime of manslaughter, and that was the reason for the verdict that was returned.

Within the text of the story itself, the use of innuendos help to provide a further Crimson "coloring" of the subject. For example, you speak of the jury members as "avoiding his (Edelin's) gaze" as they would enter the courtroom--obviously the jury members were evil people out to screw the good doctor. In reporting on page two the facts of the case, you have Edelin saying that he checked for life in the fetus for two to five seconds, and found none. You leave it at that, giving the impression that the fetus was indeed dead, and Edelin wasn't negligent at all. In fact, a defense witness under cross-examination had stated that at least ten seconds would have been necessary and that alternate methods should have been employed to test for life. Third, throughout your summation of the case, you devote one sentence to prosecutor Flanagan saying the fetus was an "independent human being." Meanwhile, the Edelin version gets eight paragraphs.

In Philip Weiss's "News Analysis" your prejudice shows through again. In case Mr. Weiss hadn't realized it, a "News Analysis" differs substantially from an editorial in that it doesn't draw conclusions, but rather, attempts to analyze the consequences of a certain story. Weiss doesn't do this at all, but rather editorializes in his second paragraph when he says the case shows how "the legal mechanisms of this state can be stretched to contrive that an abortion was a birth and then to prosecute one doctor for manslaughter." That's not drawing a conclusion?

Finally, The Crimson has shown the disturbing practice of presenting only one side of the issue in this case. Instead of attacking the raving maniacal anti-abortionists, perhaps it would be simpler to just try to understand what they are saying: once conceived a human fetus is alive; humanity is not dependent on personality or looks or age or independence, but simply on the genetic structure that says this living matter is human. --Tom Keane '78

Keane is correct in pointing out that the headline on Saturday's Crimson extra was inaccurate. The lead of the news story repeated this factual error--and should have read that Edelin was convicted for manslaughter in connection with an abortion. Neither of these errors, however, was due to bias.

On all other points, I stand firmly behind my coverage.   --Philip Weiss