Introduction

Abstract

Picture an infant in the neonatal intensive care unit: He is underdeveloped and tiny for his age, with a malformed spinal cord and a very small head. He suffers from severe diarrhea, he cries constantly — he is extremely irritable — and he never meets your gaze. This is a child born of a crack addict. And picture a low birthweight newborn suffering from heroin withdrawal: She is feverish, hypertonic and respiring rapidly; she trembles constantly and vomits intermittently; her high-pitched cry is incessant, as is her frantic fist-sucking. Now imagine a severely brain-damaged infant whose oxygen supply was cut off during delivery because his mother refused to undergo a cesarean section.