Ron grinned and looked across the room at Karen. 'Leave that to me.' ' Karen sat in the witness stand, determined to answer the questions without overreaction.
'We had exhausted all other-'
'Just a yes or no answer,' Czernek said coolly. 'Did you en-ter the Bayside University Medical Center fertility program to become pregnant by any means possible?'
'Yes.'
Rather than stroll around before the bench in Johnson's manner, Czernek stayed close to Karen, facing her to ask his barrage of questions in a clipped, businesslike manner.
'Were you aware that your problem could have been solved by the medically accepted method of non-surgical ovum trans-fer?'
'We'd tr-'
'Yes or no?'
'Yes, but-'
'So you knew about non-surgical ovum transfer?'
'Yes. We tried-'
'Just yes or no, Mrs. Chandler. Did you know that clinics performing the procedure regularly contract with women as conscious, informed ovum donors?'
'Yes.'
'And you knew that the Bayside clinic had a frozen supply of fertilized and unfertilized eggs available for you to pick and choose the traits you want in a child?'
'Yes.' Karen burned to tell the jury about her failures with the procedure.
'Yet you instead allowed Dr. Fletcher to implant an embryo in you by surgical means?'
'Yes.'
'And you allowed this even though you knew that such an embryo must have been torn from the womb of another woman?'
Johnson popped up. 'Objection! The question is argumen-tative and establishes nothing new.' Judge Lyang nodded. 'Sustained.'
'Were you aware that the embryo must have come from an abortion?' Czernek asked.
'Yes,' she answered firmly.
'And yet you allowed Dr. Fletcher to perform this proce-dure?'
'Yes.'
'And you carried this child to term and gave birth to it?'
'Yes.'
'And you filled out a birth certificate naming you and David Chandler as the mother and father even though the child bore no genetic relation to either of you?'
'Dr. Fletcher told-' She stopped just as Czernek opened his mouth. 'Yes, I did.'
'And you had no compunctions about that? You didn't think that perhaps there was something dishonest or perhaps even illegal about it all?'
'I object!' Johnson said. 'Mrs. Chandler is not a legal ex-pert.'
'Sustained.'
