Medical Advances Make For Difficult Decisions

As frequently noted in our human-interest-story-oriented media, rapid advances in post-natal surgery give more and more severely conjoined twins a chance at life that would have been impossible just a few years ago.

Poignant stories of lives in the balance emerge as these children go under the surgeon's knife ...none more poignant than Rebeca Martinez, who undergoes surgery today.

Although Rebeca is not the first baby to be diagnosed with craniopagus parasiticus -- in which a parasitic, living twin grows from the body of an infant -- all other cases have died before birth.

Today, so that Rebeca might live, her twin (whose brain is only partially developed, yet its mouth moves as Rebeca is breast-fed) must be removed from Rebeca's body and thereby killed.