Editor's Note: Joshua M. Sharfstein was supposed to write an opinion piece for today. Instead, the Social Studies concentrator selfishly chose to work on his thesis. As he ran out of the Crimson building towards Widener--mumbling something about "not graduating"--a stack of papers fell out of his bag. We were able to reconstruct the following from his notes.

THE following thesis deals with the tragic problems of infant mortality and lack of access to prenatal care that continue to plague our society.

Our society--plagued as it is by tragic infant mortality and lack of access to prenatal care--is the subject of the following thesis.

Infant mortality, lack of access to prenatal care: two issues that comprise the subject of the following thesis.

Theses can be on many different topics. This particular thesis is about infant mortality and the lack of access to prenatal care.

Lack of access to prenatal care causes infant mortality. Infant mortality, in turn, causes me to write the following thesis.

A dead infant. A woman with no access to prenatal care. A thesis with no first sentence.

Infant mortality plagues the nation like a modern-day plague.

Unique among animal species, human offspring are vulnerable and dependent until

Billions and billions of years ago

What could be more tragic than the death of an infant before it reaches the age

Nothing could be more tragic than

It's hard to imagine anything more tragic than

Very few things are more tragic

PRENATAL care, as defined in the Oxford English Dictionary, derives from the old Latin prenatus.

Whither infant mortality? Whither prenatal care? Whither thesis?

This thesis takes as its task the troublesome tiring turmoil of infant mortality.

How many dead babies does it take for politicians to

How many times must a baby die before

Once upon a time there was a country that refused to provide

It was the best of times, it was the worst of

These are the times that try a society's willingness to provide prenatal care.

In the beginning

Baby died today. Or was it yesterday?

Call me Ishmael.

It was a dark and stormy night. A door slammed. The maid screamed. A pirate ship appeared on the horizon.

"NASTY, brutish and short." Thomas Hobbes' famous words describe the lives of thousands of unfortunate American infants each year.

"Ask not what your country can do for you." Well, thousands of infants each year can't ask anything, because they

"Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness"--stirring words written by Thomas Jefferson, who never had to worry about not getting enough prenatal care.

"Baby, I love you." Perhaps the most common line in popular music, these words don't apply to how this country treats

"Oooh, baby, baby. It's a wild world." But it's a world that provides wildly inadequate health care for its babies.

HOW can a country that values its children so much allow so many to die so young?

How can we, as a society on a health kick, continue to kick so many women out of prenatal care?

How can a society so believing in ideals allow the reality of infant mortality to progress as far as it has?

How can I ever finish writing this sentence?

What do you think about infant mortality and prenatal care? If you haven't thought about it, you will after reading the following thesis.

This thesis is about infant mortality. You will read it. And you will like it. You are getting sleepy.

You may not like reading this thesis. Its topic will shock and

You lived to your first birthday, but thousands of American children

Men may not be able to give birth, but writing the first sentence of the following thesis on prenatal care gives me some idea of the pain involved.

Joshua M. Sharfstein '91 had a thesis chapter due two days ago.