Protect and Defend (34 page)

“You’re not a joke, Mary Ann, and the media isn’t reality. If
you
know you’re a good person, no one else can make you a bad one.” Pausing, Sarah rested her hand on Mary Ann’s shoulder. “You’re doing this to get your life back. Don’t let this
become
your life. Please.”

Mary Ann blinked. Then suddenly she was in Sarah’s arms, hugging her fiercely. Sarah’s own gratitude was a measure of how tired she felt. Far too tired, it now seemed, to say anything more to anyone.

W
ATCHING
D
R
. B
RUNO
Lasch testify, Sarah wished that she had slept better—or at all.

Lasch’s credentials were daunting enough: a renowned expert in biomedical ethics, Lasch had taught at Yale, was widely published, and now held a senior fellowship at America’s most distinguished center for the study of bioethical issues. But what he personified made him more formidable yet. From birth, Lasch’s body had been stunted and bent, his hands lacked fingers, and his legs—more vestigial than functional—had consigned him to a wheelchair, now placed in front of the witness stand. Most striking, though, were Lasch’s eyes, blazing with a keen intelligence.

He was now forty-two. Few had expected him to live this long or, so seriously disabled, to forge such a brilliant career. His iconic standing in the disability community was affirmed by the circle of demonstrators, many in wheelchairs, who had greeted Sarah and Mary Ann with signs saying
DISABILITY IS NOT A DEATH SENTENCE
. Pale, Mary Ann had taken Sarah’s hand.

“It seems clear,” Lasch now told Martin Tierney, “that the principal basis for your daughter’s lawsuit is not the extremely marginal threat to her reproductive capacity, but the ‘unacceptable’ nature of her child.”

His voice was reedy; he paused for breath, twisting his neck to peer at Leary. “By that standard, it’s painfully apparent to me that
I
wouldn’t be here. And I can’t help but be grateful, every day, that my parents were loving enough, and brave enough, to see past their dreams of the ideal, and see
me
.”

His voice quavered slightly. “But I shouldn’t personalize this, Your Honor. My real concern is not to tell Mary Ann Tierney ‘you’re talking about
me
.’ It’s to ask her, and to ask this court, what kind of society we are—and should be.” He turned to Mary Ann. “What I believe is this: the assertion that the Protection of Life Act is unconstitutional unless Mary Ann Tierney can take
this
life demeans the value of
any
life which is perceived as less than ‘normal,’ by whatever subjective standard the mother uses to define that.”

This was not testimony, Sarah thought—it was a lecture, delivered from the impregnable fortress of Lasch’s cruelly twisted body. But to object would seem petty and disrespectful; there was no way, now, to point out that God had given Mary Ann’s fetus arms and legs but, in all probability, nothing which resembled this man’s extraordinary brain. Beside her, Mary Ann gazed at him in awe, biting her underlip, while her father’s questions held the reverence of a man addressing a secular saint.

“Could you amplify,” Tierney asked, “your concerns about selective abortion of the disabled?”

“Certainly.” Once more, Lasch swallowed; he seemed to have trouble breathing, and he sometimes spoke in a painful wheeze. “The first concern is what I call the expressivist argument—that biology is destiny, that the trait expresses the whole. Or, put personally, that my arms and legs are all there is of me.”

Sarah winced inside; skillfully, Lasch used himself as an exhibit. “A few years ago,” he continued, “there was an anchorwoman in Los Angeles whose hands lacked fingers. She had a loving marriage, a fine career. But when she became pregnant, and it seemed clear that her baby would also
lack fingers, many people asked her how she could give birth to such a child.”

Lasch grimaced in wonder. “They were upset by the image of a fingerless child, because he violated their idea of beauty, and so should be put to death. As bad, they were telling the baby’s mother that she should never have been born. But even our
idea
of disability is subjective: in the nineteenth century, on Martha’s Vineyard, deafness was so common that virtually everyone spoke sign language. Which suggests that rather than committing murder, society can—and should—adjust to accommodate difference.”

Hastily, Sarah scribbled a note with a star beside it. As compelling—and disturbing—as Sarah herself found Lasch’s testimony, she thought it laced with a subtle ingenuousness, which Lasch himself appreciated and intended. And in this, Sarah hoped, might lie the seeds of her cross-examination.

“What,” Tierney was asking, “are your other concerns?”

“One is societal, Professor—that we’ve come to view children as commodities, not gifts to be cherished. All too often, parents see a child as an extension of
themselves
, not an end in
itself
. And so they believe they’re entitled to order up a child like something in a catalog—witness the couples who advertise on the Internet for eggs from six-foot blond Swedish volleyball players who double as Miss Universe.”

At this, Judge Leary smiled, arching his eyebrows with the bright pleasure of agreement. Though Sarah bridled at this facile linking of rich and fatuous would-be parents with the embattled girl beside her, the media, a reflection of their audience, closely attended Lasch’s every word.

Tierney still spoke softly. “Are these problems enhanced by genetic testing for pregnant women?”

“Yes, in ways that I find frightening.” Lasch glanced at Leary with a spasmodic twist of the neck. “Genetic testing grows ever more sophisticated. Today, a mother can abort this child for hydrocephalus—or because she prefers a girl.

“Tomorrow, she can abort a child for being blond, or because it’s tone-deaf, and can’t share the mother’s love for Mozart …” Lasch coughed, his body racking with tremors. “I apologize, Your Honor. My question is this—how can we let the mother select between desirable or undesirable traits,
or ‘bad’ or ‘less bad’? And do we want a world of designer babies?”

Once more, Leary’s eyebrows, raised quizzically, seemed to signal agreement. “You’ve spoken of the mother,” Tierney said. “What, in your view, is the obligation of a doctor?”

Lasch turned to him, a jerking of the head. “The medical profession,” he answered, “has failed miserably to live up to their most basic oath—to save lives.”

The effort of testifying, Sarah noticed, seemed to wear Lasch down—his tone was thinner and, for the first time, held a trace of bitterness. Sarah stifled all sympathy: within the ruthless confines of a trial, a tired, angry witness—disabled or not—served her purposes. “Many doctors,” Lasch added harshly, “encourage abortion for any and all anomalies.

“Take Down’s syndrome. A typical piece of ‘medical advice’ is, ‘What are you going to say to people who ask how you can bring such a child into the world?’

“They don’t give credit to all the ways in which parents and siblings welcome and are nurtured by loving a Down’s child, or all the love and joy that child—being loved—returns to them.” The anger in his voice faded, replaced by sadness and the strain of speaking. “We’ve all known such a child. Thanks to the callousness of doctors, there are too many others we will never know. To me, that’s more than a crime against the child—it’s a tragedy for us all.”

Like the best of witnesses, Sarah thought, Lasch had modified his tone, remembering that sorrow, not outrage, helped him cast his intended spell. “Unlike you, Professor, I’m not a religious man—I am, at best, agnostic. But I see so many paradoxes here. In my state, a woman hit by a car on the way to an abortion clinic can sue for the death of a fetus. Yet if she reaches her destination and aborts it, the fetus has no status at all …”

Lasch swallowed, then went on. “That’s why so many advocates of abortion oppose laws to protect the fetus from the horrible consequences of the mother’s drug addiction, by charging her with child endangerment—because those laws suggest that a fetus is something more than the mother’s property, to be treated as she wishes. Which is the unspoken premise Ms. Dash is urging on this court—that a disabled
baby is a tumor to be excised, with less dignity and fewer rights than a slave before the Civil War.”

With great effort, Sarah restrained herself from objecting, watching Lasch with the cold eye of a cross-examiner. Martin Tierney’s questions were gentler yet, as though he were pained by Lasch’s testimony and how it must tire him. “How do you relate these concerns,” Tierney asked, “to the life or death of my grandson?”

Lasch slowly shook his head, his gaunt face and close-cropped hair enhancing the sorrowful appearance of a spiritual man confronting evil. “Must your grandson die, I ask, because he may be born disabled?

“To me, the most persuasive argument is not the existence of a Matthew Brown. It lies in the case of the boy they now call ‘Miracle Kid.’

“As one writer described it, he was born with a face like a child’s unfinished drawing—only one, unnaturally small eye; the other side of his face blank; his nostrils separated by a deep cleft; no fingers. When the doctor presented him to his mother, she said, ‘I don’t know what this is.’”

Lasch inhaled, as if straining for the resources to continue. “What ‘this’ was,” Lasch said after a time, “was a baby with a rare disease called Fraser’s syndrome. He also had only one kidney, severe hearing loss, and an impaired nerve pathway between the right and left side of the brain. Most nurses refused to have anything to do with him.

“His parents could have let him die. Instead they fought for him through countless operations.” Pausing, Lasch addressed the courtroom. “The boy is in school now. He has a first-class mind, a sense of humor, and close friends. Because he exists, people have learned to look past what seems strange about him, to see what is so wonderful. And what is most wonderful is rare and precious in anyone, let alone a child—he’s enriched the understanding, and deepened the humanity, of everyone who knows him.”

It was a moving story, enhanced by Lasch’s struggle simply to tell it. Sarah was not immune to this; nor, plainly, was Mary Ann—to whom Bruno Lasch now spoke.

“The sacrifice those parents made,” he told her gently, “was heroic. But the child’s death would have been as great a
tragedy—perhaps greater—than the death of a Matthew Brown.

“If the hydrocephalus has impaired the development of his brain, Mary Ann, your child will likely die at birth, or shortly after. You’ll never be called on to make those kinds of sacrifices. But if he is to die, let it be at God’s hands, not yours. Give him every chance you can …”

Lasch coughed again, followed by a panting wheeze which brought tears to his eyes. “I know how hard this is,” he said with renewed effort. “I know how hard it would be to have a child who dies. But we’re very close to eugenics here, with terrible implications for the world
all
children may grow up in. What your parents are doing is an act of love, for you and for your child. In the end, I hope you’ll love them more for doing it.”

At that, Martin Tierney turned to his daughter with a look of love and pleading. “No further questions,” he murmured.

Mary Ann stared at the table; Sarah at her notes, the bare bones of cross-examination.

F
ACING
B
RUNO
L
ASCH
, Sarah called on her reserves of memory—the accumulation of two nights spent, in the week before the trial, reading Lasch’s papers on abortion and genetic testing.

“I’m curious about something,” she began. “Do you think that a teenage girl who’s been raped by her own father has the right to an abortion?”

From his wheelchair, Lasch studied her with caution. “Yes,” he answered, “under most circumstances.”

“Then let me give you a specific example. Suppose the girl
takes a home pregnancy test, finds out that she’s pregnant, and goes to an abortion clinic. Do you think she has that right?”

Lasch hesitated. “Yes.”

“Let’s take the same girl—except now she’s pregnant by her boyfriend. Does she
still
have the right to an abortion?”

At the defense table, Martin Tierney stirred, watching Sarah intently. Swallowing, Lasch murmured, “Yes.”

Sarah backed away a little; with this witness—stunted, and confined to a wheelchair—to hover would look like bullying.

“Okay. Take the same basic facts—home pregnancy test, positive result, abortion. Except that the woman’s forty, married, the mother of six, and doesn’t think her family can support a seventh child. Is
she
morally entitled to abort the fetus?”

Lasch’s eyes glinted. “It appears you’ve read my work, Ms. Dash. If so, you’ll know that I’ve written that abortion to preserve a struggling family is not per se immoral.”

“So, again, your answer is yes? On economic grounds?”

Curtly, Lasch nodded. “It is.”

“Then—unlike Professor Tierney—you’re not morally opposed to all abortion.”

Lasch twisted in his chair, as though to minimize his discomfort. “To me,” he said quietly, “abortion is always unfortunate. But it goes too far to say that it’s always immoral.”

From the bench, Leary eyed the witness with new perplexity. “In your direct testimony,” Sarah said, “you gave us the example of Martha’s Vineyard in the nineteenth century, where deafness was common. Are you aware that the principal cause was incest?”

Lasch blinked. “
One
of the causes,” he amended.

Sarah kept her tone quiet, dispassionate. “And you believe that the victim of incest has the right to an abortion.”

Lasch pulled himself straighter, staring into Sarah’s eyes. More sharply, he answered, “What I said, Ms. Dash, was under most circumstances.”

“So tell me when she doesn’t.”

Lasch swallowed. In a thin voice, he answered, “I can’t give you a litany of examples, Ms. Dash. But motivation is important.”