When does a fetus become a person, and entitled to protection? Some people have the religious belief that they don't even after birth.

In northeast Brazil, where life is tough, people are poor, and contraception and abortion are prohibited by the dominant religion, 200 out of 1,000 babies die within the first year of life (for all of Brazil, that number is 67, for the U.S. it is 10).

Nancy Scheper-Hughes reports that mothers there habitually judge each child on a rough scale of readiness for life. Alert, active children get food and medical attention; lethargic, passive, "ghostlike" children don't, and are likely to die in infancy.

When that happens, the mothers do not show grief. Some say that the death was "Gods will," and others that their baby has been called to heaven to become a "little angel."

--Anne Zeilstra