"Are you sure you should call her `doctor?'"
"Objection!" Johnson said loudly. "Permission to approach the bench." Judge Lyang motioned him forward. Czernek followed.
"I move for a mistrial," Johnson whispered. "Informing the jury that BMQA pulled her credentials is incredibly prejudi-"
"I said no such thing," Czernek countered swiftly.
"You were lucky," Lyang said softly to Czernek, "that he cut you off when he did, or I would have had grounds to declare a mistrial. Keep calling her `doctor.' They've suspended her privi-leges, they can't revoke her degree."
Czernek nodded silently, turning back to the witness stand. Johnson smiled at Fletcher as he sat between her and Karen.
"Strike the last question from the record," Lyang said. "And proceed."
"Speaking as an expert in medical ethics," Czernek resumed, "do you think Doctor Fletcher behaved ethically in transfer-ring a fetus from the uterus of Valerie Dalton to the uterus of Karen Chandler?"
"I would have to say no."
Evelyn gazed at him with barely veiled misery. His words were those of an objective expert, but she knew that after so many years he still had not forgiven her.
"Why is that?" Czernek asked.
"What Dr. Fletcher has done is to move into a new medical realm that is so controversial, so loaded with emotion on both sides of the issue, that anyone working legitimately in the field-people with reputations to protect-would never risk their professional lives in something so dangerous not only to the fetus but to both women as well."
"Both women?" Czernek said, turning toward the jury. "The defense has maintained that Valerie Dalton received an ordi-nary abortion and suffered no additional risk."
"Well..." Dr. Brunner unclasped his hands and began using them for emphasis. He spoke at a slow, professorial pace. "As I understand her technique, the suction device she used had been modified to remove the fetus intact, chorionic membrane and all. To do that without damaging the tissues would require a tube nearly an inch and a half in diameter." He looked at the female jurors. "Imagine inserting that past the cervix and you can see the added opportunity for trauma the proce-dure entails. To me, that qualifies as battery."
The doctor shook his head. "And the risk to Karen Chandler is unconscionable. She may have volunteered, even pleaded for such an operation to get pregnant, but she had no idea that a transoption had never been performed before, that there was no basis in animal research, no peer review, no approval by any committee of ethics. Nothing. Just one doctor saying, `What the hell, let's give it a try.'" Karen watched the jury during Dr. Brunner's interrogation. They all listened with rapt attention, many taking notes. They would give his testimony great weight. She glanced over at Terry, who took notes at a furious pace, his head hunched over the yellow pad. Dr. Fletcher seemed calm, almost detached. Her part, Karen thought, is over. But we still have to fight for Renata. She clasped David's hand tightly and gazed up at Dr. Brunner.
Czernek stroked at his beard. "Dr. Brunner, your work in non-surgical ovum transfer has given you a great deal of in-sight into alternative forms of pregnancy. Can you tell the court what ethical or medical value transoption has?"
"It has very little, I'm afraid. As a novelty, it has some value regarding microsurgical technique, but that is no reason to risk the health and reproductive potential of two women for the sake of doing something new simply because it is new." The spectacled man gestured as he spoke to the jury. "It would be like taking two people with healthy hearts and switching them in transplant operations. Well, you might say, they both got what they wanted-a healthy heart-but the surgical risk is incredible compared to the alternative of just leaving them alone." He was pleased with the analogy. A few of the jurors smiled, won over by the man's quiet charm. Czernek felt the tide turning in his favor again.
"And what is the ethical status," he said, "of novelty opera-tions performed on human subjects?" Brunner spoke with emphatic sincerity. "Completely im-moral. What Dr. Fletcher did was outrageous. She ignored every procedure designed to safeguard patients and protect the integrity of the hospital-"
"I object!" Johnson shot to his feet, missile-like. "Dr. Fletcher endlessly requested peer review from a slothful bureaucracy more concerned with avoiding litigation than with saving hu-man li-" A gavel bang silenced him.
"You'll have your chance to grandstand, Mr. Johnson." Lyang turned to Dr. Brunner. "Please explain to the jury how she ignored procedures."
Brunner nodded. "Certainly. I understand that though she requested an ethics committee to approve the concept of such an operation years before and then again months before, she proceeded before any final decision had been made, thereby effectively evading the extremely important medical process of review and approval."
Evelyn glared at him from her seat, fuming. She grasped a pencil with both hands, flexing at it. Terry patted her hand gently. "I'll take care of him on the cross," he whispered. He looked over his shoulder at the spectators to see Jane Burke and Avery Decker sitting nearly side by side. They both seemed to be having a good time. They should sell popcorn at these things, he thought.
"Dr. Brunner..." Ron looked his quizzical best as he framed his question. "Does transoption totally solve the problem of abortion, as Dr. Fletcher implies? Is it the moral solution to abortion that the world has been searching for?"
Brunner mulled over the question for a moment. The jurors leaned forward as if to hear the answer a few microseconds sooner.
"In some very few, rare cases, it might be an answer. It is not the answer to infertility, because virtually any problem a woman has in that department can be handled by non-surgi-cal ovum transfer, a highly advanced, medically approved, and ethical treatment. There you have professional ovum donors inseminated by the husband's own sperm. We can take that ovum and determine its sex, examine its chromosomes for genetic flaws, use a library of what we call probes to check it for proclivities toward over two thousand different diseases, and implant it into the recipient mother without any compli-cated, dangerous surgical techniques. It fastens itself to the uterine wall naturally, and grows there naturally. And if the recipient wants a few extra eggs set aside just in case, the fer-tilized ova can be frozen cryogenically and stored. They'll be viable for up to ten thousand years." Fletcher's fingers snapped the pencil in two. She looked around her as if awakening from a dream.
"With transoption," Brunner continued, "a woman whose, shall we say, significant other you know nothing about gives you an embryo she doesn't want. It's too far along in its devel-opment to use a lot of the probes and hence is an unknown quantity. Why use it when women today demand quality pregnancies?" He looked at Fletcher as if he had been delivering a lecture to her. His earnest desire that she understand him showed in the eyes that dwelt behind his glasses.
"And," Czernek asked quietly, "would transoption help the woman who seeks to terminate her pregnancy?"
The doctor shifted about in his seat as if wrestling with the question. "Most women," he said, "do not think about the con-sequences of an abortion. Most women who get abortions are young, late teens, early twenties. They want to end their preg-nancies and get on with their lives. Many abortions are the result of a liaison the woman would prefer to expunge com-pletely, right down to the product of that relationship. To insist that such a woman undergo an operation that has just as much-if not more-risk as an abortion does of damaging her reproductive potential, simply to save an eight-week-old em-bryo that lacks a full bundle of human rights, is asking too much of most women and of the medical profession."