cated that a majority of female voters had voted for
the opposition. Women did later begin to vote for
Democrats to a greater degree than for Republicans,
however, creating the so-called gender gap.
Impact Although Geraldine Ferraro was not elected,
her candidacy preceded—and probably helpedlead
to—an explosion in the number of women who ran
for and won political office in the United States. Be-
yond the political arena, the sight of a woman in a
position of power on the national stage advanced
the cause of feminism in the American workplace
and in American culture generally.
Further Reading
Breslin, Rosemary.Gerr y! A Woman Making Histor y.
New York: Pinnacle, 1984.
Drew, Elizabeth. Campaign Journal.New York:
Macmillan, 1985.
Ferraro, Geraldine.Ferraro: My Stor y. New York: Ban-
tam Books, 1985.
___.Framing a Life: A Family Memoir.New York:
Scribner, 1998.
Witt, Linda, Karen M. Paget, and Glenna Matthews.
Running as a Woman: Gender and Power in American
Politics.New York: Free Press, 1993.
Richard L. Wilson
See also Elections in the United States, 1984; Fem-
inism; Liberalism in U.S. politics; Mondale, Walter;
Women’s rights.
Fetal medicine
Definition Maintenance of health and detection
and treatment of diseases in unborn children
Fetal medicine gained prominence in the 1980’s as a medi-
cal specialty. Accurate and detailed assessment of the health
of unborn children was made possible through the use of
high-resolution ultrasound. Malformations, illnesses, and
poor fetal growth became diagnosable and even treatable be-
fore birth.
In the early 1980’s, the introduction of biophysical
profile (BPP) scoring greatly facilitated the assess-
ment of fetal health. The BPP assessed fetal move-
ment, tone, breathing, heart rate accelerations, and
amniotic fluid volume. A high BPP score indicated a
healthy fetus, while a low score reflected a fetus in
trouble. Early recognition of a harmful uterine envi-
ronment allowed timely delivery of the fetus and cir-
cumvented complications such as stillbirth or brain
damage due to lack of oxygen.
Diagnostic Technologies Advances in fetal medi-
cine also made it possible to detect genetic disor-
ders in an unborn child by screening an expectant
mother’s blood for specific biochemical markers.
The first routinely used marker was alpha-fetopro-
tein (αFP). ElevatedαFP levels required detailed
evaluation of the fetus for malformations such as
spina bifida and anencephaly. Tests for other bio-
chemical markers—human chorionic gonadotropin
(hCG) and unconjugated estriol (uE3)—arrived in
the latter part of the decade. Testing the mother’s
blood for these three markers helped identify ap-
proximately 60 percent of fetuses with Down syn-
drome.
Improved ultrasound imaging techniques made
the fetus itself directly accessible for diagnostic test-
ing. Under ultrasound visualization, a needle could
be guided through the mother’s abdomen into an
umbilical cord vessel and fetal blood could then
be drawn for laboratory examination. This proce-
dure, known as percutaneous fetal blood sampling
(PUBS) or cordocentesis, was also used to give
the unborn child medications or blood products. A
mother whose blood is Rhesus negative may form
antibodies against the red blood cells of her baby if it
is Rhesus positive. These maternal antibodies de-
stroy the fetus’s red blood cells and cause severe, life-
threatening anemia. With the help of PUBS, these
fetuses could be transfused during pregnancy until
it became safe to deliver them.
Fetal Surgery The ability to visualize an unborn
child in great detail allowed early discovery of organ
malformations that caused death or were associ-
ated with poor long-term neurodevelopment. The
thought arose that correction of these anomalies
before birth might increase the child’s chances of
survival or improve its neurologic outcome.
Normal growth of a fetus’s lungs requires the
presence of amniotic fluid. Fetal urine is an impor-
tant component of amniotic fluid, and fetuses with
no kidneys or poorly functioning kidneys produce
little to no urine and die rapidly after delivery. Some
fetuses have an obstruction in their urinary tract
that does not allow urine to flow freely out of the
bladder into the amniotic cavity. In 1981, Michael
Harrison and his colleagues performed the first fe-366 Fetal medicine The Eighties in America