ABSTRACT
The issues did not go away with birth. Medical advances made it possible to prolong the lives of young infants in ways previously not possible. Questions were raised about the wisdom of prolonging young lives in the face of birth defects and painful, debilitating conditions. New regulations were proposed and eventually refined. Questions remained. What were the boundaries of privacy for parental choice, and what were the boundaries of a life worth living? Who should decide? What should we do when parents wanted medical care continued, but physicians saw further treatment as futile? Given the uncertainty of prognoses, decisions are most frequently made in a sea of ambiguity.
