A poke from Decker shattered his vision.
'Sure,' the pastor whispered with acid sarcasm. 'I can just see us with our hands up feminist cunt-'
'Shut up.' Rosen stood without looking at Decker and moved to a seat five rows back. He sat, visibly shaken, and backhanded the tears from his cheeks.
Fletcher saw the exchange. She looked Rosen in the eye.
'Why,' Johnson asked, 'did you take Valerie Dalton's fetus? Was it your intent to harm her in any way?'
'She didn't want her fetus. I removed it. She didn't ask that anything special be done with it after its removal. At that point, her contract waived any claim to what became of the fetus. I determined that it was immoral and unethical to kill that fetus or merely let it die, so I transopted it into a willing recipient. What I have done is neither criminal nor immoral. The AMA and the state of California had granted me the power to com-mit murder and call it abortion. I refused to exercise that power. Like the woodsman in the tale of Snow White, I pretended to commit the act for the queen while secretly permitting the child to live. I found a way to eliminate the moral dilemma of pregnancy termination.
'For you cannot make people behave morally by passing a law or blowing up a building. But you can make a moral choice technologically possible. You can make it fashionable, accept-able. You can make it as cost-effective as the immoral choice. You can make it marketable, easily available. And then I guarantee that people will make the right choice if you just leave them alone.
'All that I have done with my life is on trial here, so my life itself is on trial. Why? Because a bit of tissue was legally aban-doned by Valerie Dalton. I saw in it a human quality that she and the state chose not to acknowledge. I gave that tissue to someone who saw in it the same quality I did and wished to nurture it. Within her body, it grew into the baby named Renata. She is a distinct, individual human being, not chattel over which we can squabble about ownership. She is a human being in her own right. And Karen Chandler-by contract, by birth, and by choice-is her mother.'
Rosen and several others applauded. More joined in just as Judge Lyang slammed the gavel for attention.
'Quiet down, please.'
Johnson smiled, spreading his arms expansively. 'I have no more questions for the witness.'
'I do.'
Czernek stood. Valerie grasped his sleeve, looking up at him.
'What?' he whispered.
She almost spoke, then shook her head and said nothing. Her fingers released him.
'I'd like to ask you,' he said, 'Doctor, whether you think society has any say in what is or is not right or wrong.'
'Who are society?' Fletcher looked around the room. 'Ev-eryone except me? Society is composed of individuals. The sum total of their separate choices is their `say.'' She leaned for-ward to gaze at Czernek with just the barest smile on her lips. 'If fifty-one percent of society approved of infanticide or sla-very, should I approve of it? Would you?'
'Just answer the question.'
'No, `society' has no say distinct from the choices of indi-viduals.' She settled back in her chair.
'Immoral laws and primitive opinions should be ignored with impunity, even if society has to be dragged kicking and screaming toward a new respect for life and rights. Those in the pro-life or pro-choice camps who refuse to embrace transoption are enemies of both life and choice and will alienate themselves from the main-stream consensus that will form around transoption as it did around adoption.' Czernek's voice boomed out at its most theatrical level. 'Oh, you're a fine one to defend life and rights. You've been per-forming abortions for years, but you save one fetus, and that gives you the high moral ground.'
Fletcher's face was a grim mask. 'No one knows the truth. I never-' Czernek cut her off. 'I haven't finished yet. You deceived Valerie Dalton into giving you her child, you risked the life of Karen Chandler in an untested operation, you let the baby get sick-' Fletcher coolly interrupted him. 'I've stated before that Valerie was not deceived. She received the pregnancy termi-nation she wanted. Karen agreed to the operation and has not expressed any displeasure with the degree of risk. Renata had no say in the matter, but I suggest that we wait twenty years and ask her if she would have preferred to have been aborted.'
Valerie wept silently, her head down on the table.
'As for your rights as the father, as I see it, you have none. You have no say in whether the woman should keep or expel the fetus; it is her body, her right. You do, however, have the right to rescue that fetus and find a new womb for it, some-thing you chose not to do.'
