want to be. Correct?'
'That is correct.' Dr. Brunner, half expecting theatrics, grew calmer at Johnson's mellow pace. He sat back in the chair, adjusted his glasses, and set his arms on the rests.
'Have you ever encountered a woman who wanted an abor-tion but wished she could do something other than kill her unborn child? I use the word `kill' as a concerned, uninformed pregnant person might.' Brunner nodded. 'I have had several women come to me with such a request. One sees it in women in their late twen-ties or so. Something happens to them around the age of twenty-seven that makes an abortion a very traumatic experi-ence. Eighteen-year-olds barely notice; they use abortion al-most as a form of contraception. In fact, when the abortifa- cient RU 486 becomes more readily available, morning-after contraception will put the whole question of surgical abor-tions to rest once-'
'Please just answer my question, Dr. Brunner. Are there women who would prefer to have their pregnancies termi-nated in such a way as to avoid harming the fetus?'
'Yes, there are. Generally older women who sense their bio-logical clocks ticking away and fear they're missing what might be their last chance at motherhood.'
'And,' Johnson asked, pacing between the witness stand and the jury box, 'have you seen women who are not able to be-come pregnant by any means, including ovum transfers?'
'Yes, even though such a woman is rare. We can take a woman who has no ovaries at all, implant a donor egg, and bring her to term using supplemental hormones until the fe-tus takes over producing them.'
'So there are women who might benefit from a transopted fetus?' Brunner sighed, shifting in the chair. 'I don't dispute that there might be someone, somewhere, who would benefit from transoption. It is clear, in retrospect, that Mrs. Chandler ben-efited from the procedure. But this is an extremely rare case that does not justify such a risky, unresearched, unapproved operation.'
'Could it be,' Terry said evenly, 'that it is unresearched and unapproved because the medical establishment finds abortion to be easy and lucrative compared to making any effort to save the life of a tiny human being?'
The surgeon hesitated for a moment, frustrated that the whole question of fetus rights kept bubbling up like gas in a swamp. 'When you say `tiny human being,' you're packing a lot of emotion into three simple words. Deciding when a fetus becomes a human being with full human rights is one of the hard questions of medicine. Is a full-term baby human at birth? Only a cynic would deny that. What about five minutes before birth? If birth confers humanity, abortion should be completely legal and available all the way up to that point. And even though it technically is, the standard is that abortion is generally inadvisable after the second trimester. But then comes the ques-tion of exactly where in the second trimester. Is a fetus human at twenty-six weeks but not at twenty-five? Is it human at one thousand grams' weight but not at nine hundred ninety-nine?'
'Thank you, Doctor, for-'
'May I finish? I think this illustrates Dr. Fletcher's fallacy.' Johnson began to speak, glanced at Judge Lyang and the jury, and then nodded. 'Be my guest,' he said, trying to mask his trepidation.
'These line-drawing arguments are used with astounding effectiveness by the pro-life groups. Some people, such as Mr. Decker-and, I presume, Dr. Fletcher-reach back as far as the point of conception to declare that that is when a human being with full human rights is created. I thought so, too, at one time. But the more you discover about fertility, the more trouble you have finding a distinct point of change. Concep-tion takes place over several hours. Do an egg and a sperm become a human being at the point that the sperm fuses to the outer membrane of the egg? When the egg finally admits the sperm that has survived its immunological attack? When their respective DNA intermingle? When mitosis begins? When the blastocyst nestles in the uterine lining? When?
'Life is a continuum, stretching ever backward and forward through time. You can't take a certain arbitrary point and say, `Humanity begins here,' as if it hadn't been present before.' Brunner pinched thumb and forefinger together. 'To say, though, that a blastocyst smaller than the human eye can see is a human being with as many rights as an adult is like saying a one-year-old should be able to vote. Rights accrue in incre-ments over time, and the prevailing consensus is that the right to life begins at some point when most fetuses could generally be expected to survive outside the womb.' He turned from the jurors to gaze directly at Fletcher with sympathy growing in his eyes. 'Dr. Fletcher's concern for unviable fetuses is touching but not worth the risk to the adult women involved. It certainly merits no serious effort to re-search. If she values human life so, she should have worked exclusively in the fields of fertility and contraception-as I have-instead of trying to find loopholes and rationales for abortion. She was wrong even to pursue such a goal.'
Evelyn felt the crush of his words as she did three decades ago. His hurt had not diminished. He had sublimated his pain into his work as she had buried her regrets in hers.
Salvage what you can, Johnson mused during the brief si-lence, then said, 'You admit, though, that transoption did help Karen Chandler in this instance-a woman who was unable to become pregnant by any current means.'
'She seemed to have exhausted all the legitimate methods. Was pregnancy so important to her, though, that she overlooked adoption agencies?'
'That is not at issue here.'
'Isn't it?' Brunner looked around the courtroom. 'There are tens of thousands of unwanted children languishing in orphan-ages and state facilities-'
