"Do you feel that you have lost a little of your moral high ground to Dr. Fletcher, who labored for years to find a way to protect the rights of the preborn while you just pushed for laws to make pregnant women a new criminal class?"
"Not at all."
Johnson shrugged. "You said that if just one preborn were lost in a transoption, that was reason enough to forbid the pro-cedure entirely. Would you say the same for prenatal heart surgery? I submit that if transoption saves even one preborn that might otherwise be lost to abortion-as it has-then Dr. Evelyn Fletcher is closer to the spirit of God than you or any-one in this room!" Turning his back on the minister, Johnson looked trium-phantly at Czernek and said, over his shoulder, "No further questions."
Czernek, annoyed at being upstaged by his opponent, glow-ered at the tangled-haired young man. Looking up at the judge, he said, "I wish to call Ms. Jane Burke to the stand." Burke arose, catching the attention of the courtroom cam-eras not simply because she was the next witness. Years ago, Jane had realized that it did her movement no good for their proponents to look and dress like frumps. Men and women, it turned out, rejected the feminist message from women who looked as if they spoke through a mouthful of sour grapes. She had lost weight, toned up, and dressed for the public eye. Look-ing more like someone from the cover of a fashion magazine than someone from a politically active organization, she wore a white-and-mauve business suit with broad shoulders, nar-row waist, and a skirt that ended a few inches above the knee. She clasped a thin, matching mauve notebook in her hand. Striding gracefully past the bar, she nodded cordially to the departing sour-faced minister.
"Do you swear," the court clerk said in sonorous tones, "that the testimony you are about to give shall be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?"
"I do," she said simply, and sat in the witness seat.
She inadvertently cringed at the warmth left by Decker's corpulent flesh, as if both his girth and his philosophy might be contagious. She suppressed it almost instantly, though, sit-ting up with composure and elegance. Her walnut-hued hair possessed a fashionable wave, and she left her glasses in her purse.
"Please state your name for the record," Czernek said, ap-proaching her casually.
"Jane Harrison Burke."
"And what are your qualifications as an expert in reproduc-tive ethics?" She touched her Sisters Network pin unconsciously and said, "I am the president of Women for Reproductive Freedom. I have a Ph.D. in-"
"Defense stipulates she's qualified." Johnson knew the breadth of her education and did not want the jury to hear it.
"Ms. Burke, as an expert in reproductive ethics, tell the court your observations concerning transoption."
She sat back, straight in the chair, like a queen on a throne. "Ethically, transoption is a dehumanizing abomination."
Czernek nodded toward the jurors. "Could you tell the court why?" She turned toward the jury. They watched her and listened, some with admiration, some with cautious distrust. "Over the past decade, advances in reproductive science have been made in an absolute moral vacuum. Purely in the interest of male genetic narcissism, doctors have labored mightily to devise ways that a man can have a child-usually a male child-in spite of a woman's inability to conceive. Transoption is just another part of the mosaic."
She used her long, graceful hands to explain, emphasize, illustrate. "New treatments for infertility, whose basic tenet is that an infertile woman is `sick' and must be `healed' at any cost, really do nothing more than reduce women to deperson-alized breeding machines. Billions of dollars are being poured into research that tells a woman, `Look-all that you have done with your life is meaningless if you can't make babies. We'll find a way to make them in spite of your shortcomings. You are superfluous.'
"In vitro fertilization meant that a woman who once could not conceive normally could now be forced to bear an heir for her husband. Surrogate motherhood went one step further by cutting the woman out of the man's plans for fatherhood en-tirely. Now he could hire a woman-usually someone who had no choice but to accept the thousands of dollars offered-to undergo a pregnancy that would shove his chromosomes for-ward one more generation. Thank goodness laws are being made to ban that bit of mercenary bondage." She looked at the women in the jury. "Transoption goes totally beyond anything yet encountered. It allows a man to seize a fetus from one woman and force it into another woman so that he can claim an heir even if that heir has absolutely no relation to him what-soever! It is the ultimate cruelty for the ultimate in hollow vic-tories. For the maintenance of the sham of fatherhood, women are now to become completely interchangeable wombs, to-tally robbed of any say in the use and disposition of their bodily tissues.
"Mr. Decker made a big point about the fetus being geneti-cally different from the woman simply because it contains a little genetic matter from a man. May I point out that it re-ceives everything else from the woman? It wouldn't be able to convert nutrients into its own genetic matter if there weren't a woman eating, breathing, and living to surround and protect it.
"Or does Dr. Fletcher intend to cut out the woman entirely? Why should a man even marry? Is Dr. Fletcher working on ways to remove the entire uterus from a woman, connect it to a machine, and churn out babies on male demand? All for a price?" She stared hatefully at Fletcher. "A price not calcu-lated just in dollars but also in the immeasurable suffering and oppression of the entire female species." Applause erupted in scattered portions of the courtroom. Cameras swung about for reactions. Judge Lyang gaveled for silence.
Czernek let out a breath he had been holding, spellbound. "Thank you, Ms. Burke. Thank you for your insight on this. I have no further questions. You've covered it all." He returned to his seat. Johnson stood, running a hand through his hair. "Ms. Burke," he said with a touch of confusion, "you leave me at a loss for words. I can't understand how someone who battles so val-iantly for women's rights can support something as brutally murderous as abortion. Doesn't abortion deprive an unborn woman of her right to life?"
Burke smiled at the obvious baiting. "There is no such thing as an unborn woman," she said with a touch of condescen-sion. "A fetus is a piece of tissue inside a woman, just as much a part of her as an appendix. It cannot reason, it cannot sur-vive outside her body. It only has the potential of someday being a human being. And that point comes at birth, when it becomes a separate and distinct human being."
"Maybe I'm a little thickheaded," Johnson said. "Doesn't the fact that we are here today arguing over the custody of Baby Renata prove that a fetus can survive outside its mother's body?"
"By planting it in another woman's body, certainly. But that's the same as saying a parasite can survive without its host if one can move it around from host to host." Terry raised a surprised eyebrow. "Fetuses are now para-sites?"
"In a sense, yes. It is an invading organism that takes nour-ishment from its host."
"So now you admit that it is a distinct organism."
"No," she said. "Well, yes, inasmuch as it is a tumorlike growth that swells at a fantastic rate."
"Tumor, parasite." He stared at her for a moment, then back at the jury. "Don't these words describe unnatural invasions of the human body that can happen to both men and women?"
"Of course."
"Isn't pregnancy, though, something that is not only natural but vital to the human race, which can only occur in women?"
"Put that way, yes. But-"
"Parasites stay with their hosts until the host dies. A fetus stays with a woman for nine months max, correct?"
"Yes," Burke replied in a tight voice. She knew where he was leading her. Mild laughter mixed with whispered comments from the spectators.