[Randy I. Bellows] noted that the Utah native was considered a leader in genetics in the 1970s, when he became the first U.S. doctor to perform amniocentesis, a procedure now widely used to detect some birth defects. When [Cecil B. Jacobson] opened his Reproduction Genetics Center in Vienna in 1976, amniocentesis was his "bread and butter," Bellows said. But as more hospitals and clinics began to offer the procedure, "the defendant's amnio practice began to dry up," he said.

Although Jacobson performed amniocentesis on as many as 600 patients a year during the peak of his practice, that number fell to 200 a year by the mid-1980s, Bellows explained. Jacobson's income also dropped, falling from $475,000 in 1982 to $300,000 four years later, the prosecutor said.

[James R. Tate] explained that much of Jacobson's practice was born out of a belief that expensive modern treatments could be supplanted by "natural medicine." Where other doctors relied on biopsies and other procedures that invaded the woman's body, Jacobson believed that pregnancy was best achieved by keeping the woman's temperature charts and using natural hormones to regulate ovulation, Tate said.