Protect and Defend (43 page)

From the stand, Mary Ann watched this colloquy in bewilderment. “Of course,” Leary answered somberly. “That’s your right, Professor. And, one might think, your duty.”

There was a note of reproof in Leary’s voice—not for Tierney, but for Sarah. She had no choice but to sit and watch.

Turning, Tierney faced his daughter. “Do you love your child, Mary Ann?”

The girl blinked. In a near whisper, she answered, “Yes.”

“And before he was part of our lives, you believed that taking
any
innocent, unborn life was wrong.”

Mary Ann hesitated, and her voice fell to a whisper. “Yes.”

“Do you
still
believe your son is a life?”

Involuntarily, Mary Ann glanced down at her stomach. “Yes,” she answered. “But he probably won’t
have
a life.”

Now her father paused. “Do you think that you should take his life, Mary Ann, because God may have given him a disability?”

Mary Ann stared at the floor, as if penitent. “No,” she said. “Not if that’s the only reason. But it isn’t.”

Tierney looked back at her, his face expressing so perfectly his puzzlement and doubt that Sarah had a startling, swift perception—that, whatever his feelings, Martin Tierney had an actor’s gifts. “So now you would take your own son’s life out of God’s hands, and into yours? And, having done so, end it?”

Now Mary Ann looked up. “They don’t think my baby has a brain,” she answered. “But God gave
me
one, to make decisions. I don’t think it’s a sin to want more babies who will live.”

She was holding her own, Sarah thought. But Tierney seemed undaunted; armed with a father’s knowledge, he had another question for every answer. “Like Matthew Brown?” he inquired.

Mary Ann’s lips parted. “That was a miracle,” she answered. “His mother said so herself.”

“Matthew’s mother,” Tierney responded, “left him in God’s hands. Do you think she was wrong?”

Not if that was her choice
, Sarah willed the girl to answer. But Mary Ann looked down again. “No,” she said.

At once Tierney’s face became a portrait of compassion and concern. “Suppose that you take this baby’s life, and then discover that he had a normal brain. How will you feel then?”

Mary Ann still could not look at him. “Terrible,” she said in a trembling voice. “Worse than that.”

Angrily, Sarah turned toward Margaret Tierney.
How can you sit there?
she wanted to ask. But the girl’s mother, though pale, watched her husband without flinching.

Tierney moved closer to their daughter. “You’d wish you hadn’t taken his life, wouldn’t you?”

“Yes.”

“To you,
that
would be a sin.”

Mary Ann hunched on the witness stand, as if protecting herself against a chill. “I wouldn’t
mean
to do it,” she protested. “What it means is that I had to make a choice.”

“No,” Tierney responded, “you
don’t
have to. Do you understand now, Mary Ann, that your mother and I are trying to spare you the terrible consequences of
making
such a choice?”

Slowly, Mary Ann looked up again. “Maybe you are,” she answered. “But it’s also about your own beliefs. They’re so strong,
and you’re
so sure, that what
I
believe doesn’t count.”

This sudden challenge begged a question which, though palpably reluctant, Tierney was forced to ask. “And what do you believe, Mary Ann? Or think you believe.”

She sat straighter, drawing from a reserve of strength that Sarah had not been sure remained. “
This
baby doesn’t have much of a chance,” she answered. “But if I have him, maybe he’ll be the only baby I’ll ever have, and I’ll have to watch him die. No one but
me
should make me live with that.”

Though firm, Mary Ann’s response had, to Sarah, the sound of the girl approaching the limit of exhaustion. “Do you remember,” her father asked, “what Dr. McNally said? That there may be as much chance your son will be normal as there is of infertility? And that any risk is extremely remote.”

Mary Ann looked down again. “I remember,” she said stubbornly, and then suddenly she faced him, bursting out, “I
understand as well as you do—even better, because it’s
me
. You say I don’t, because I’m fifteen. You want to force me to take that chance. You want to tell me what’s ‘remote.’

“That’s
not
about me—it’s about you. You, and what happened to my mother. You, and what
you
believe.

“Maybe I’ll have the abortion and feel terrible. Maybe the baby will be another miracle. But how will
you
feel—
and
my mother—if I can’t ever have more children?”

Taken aback, Tierney stood taller. “That’s not the question.”

“You never asked yourself that? Did you ever ask my mother?”

The silence, total now, felt stifling to Sarah. “Yes,” Tierney answered. “How can you think otherwise?”

Face ashen, Margaret Tierney closed her eyes. “Maybe you
asked
her,” Mary Ann responded, “but I
watched
her.”

Helpless, Sarah had the sudden sense of too many truths being spoken. “I watched her, too.” Tierney answered with the sadness of reminiscence. “When you were born, and in all the years since.”

Mary Ann turned from him, resistance seeping out of her in the shame of having said too much. “I want to have more babies,” she murmured in a plaintive voice. “Please.”

Irresolute, Tierney stood between his daughter and his wife, mirror images of agony. He seemed to weigh his choices, the volatility he risked in speaking further, then said at last, “No further questions.”

After a moment, Leary turned to Sarah. In reluctant tones, he asked, “Anything more, Ms. Dash?”

“No,” Sarah answered. “Nothing.”

O
N THE MORNING
Judge Patrick Leary would render his decision, Sarah Dash stood up to make her final argument.

The courtroom was quiet. After the raw emotions of the two prior days, with father pitted against daughter, Leary appeared less crisp, as if the burden of ruling had overtaken his pleasure in presiding. Fresh-faced, Mary Ann Tierney looked apprehensive, yet hopeful, sustained by several hours sleep with the aid of a mild sedative. Both Martin and Margaret Tierney feigned an air of calm, as though pretending—in the sad way of families at odds—that nothing remarkable had happened. But their tension, like Mary Ann’s, showed in their stillness, the inability of parent and child to look at each other. As for Sarah, she tried to ignore the pressures bearing down on her—her doubts about Leary, the invisible audience of millions, the stakes for countless other young women—to focus on drawing the judge into Mary Ann Tierney’s experience.

“This case,” she began, “is about a fifteen-year-old girl who—five months pregnant—finds herself staring at a sonogram.

“On that sonogram is a fetus with an enormous head.

“Almost certainly, it has no brain. And there are only two ways it’s coming out of her—by abortion, or by cesarean section.

“If aborted, the fetus will die. If delivered—almost as surely—the fetus will die. The difference is this: if Mary Ann delivers by cesarean, there is a small but measurable possibility she will
never
have a child again.”

Listening, Leary looked pinched, unhappy; it struck Sarah that he preferred imagining himself as the parent, rather than the child. Intent, she pressed on.

“All this she’s known for just a minute. But there’s one
other
thing she’s known for most of her life: that her own birth left the woman comforting her—her own mother— unable to have more children. But though she shares this frightening prospect with her mother, Mary Ann remains silent.”

Sarah turned now, facing Martin Tierney. “She knows her parents’ principles all too well. Never speak of sex. Never speak of birth control. Never, ever speak of abortion. And— because she knows too well what these principles have cost them—
never
hurt your mother by saying you’re afraid you’ll end up sterile, like her.”

Though Tierney met her eyes, his cheeks were concave hollows, hinting at a steely effort. “But she is afraid,” Sarah told him softly. “So, in desperation, she asks her parents—
begs
them—for permission to abort. What she gets back is the cold comfort of their principles, and her father’s heartless accusation that she’s ‘selfish.’ And she absorbs the saddest lesson for
any
child to learn: that to disagree with
this
mother and father is to go through life alone.”

Tierney looked down, then renewed his emotionless stare at Sarah, who faced the judge again. “Now Mary Ann Tierney has
no one
. The only refuge she can think of is a women’s clinic; the only reason she knows of it is that her priest is trying to shut it down. And when she goes, she sees him there, and runs away.

“It takes two weeks for her to return. Two weeks to muster the courage it takes for a fifteen-year-old to fight through a crowd of demonstrators who believe as her parents do. Her reward is to discover that—perhaps in those two weeks—she has become the first subject of the Protection of Life Act. That she has lost the right to protect her physical and emotional health. That her only hope is to challenge
that
law, and
these
parents, in
this
court.”

Pausing, Sarah stood taller. “She tries to imagine how hard it will be. That she will face her parents’ anger. That she has to challenge a federal law. That strangers will hate her for it. That others will exploit her. That she will unleash political warfare she can but dimly understand.” Once more, Sarah lowered her voice. “The one thing her lawyer never imagines, and so never thinks to tell her, is that the court from which
Mary Ann must seek protection will put her on national television.”

Leary reddened. Quickly, Sarah added, “The court has its reasons, I know. But Mary Ann Tierney is still here, asking for its protection. And I do not think that this court can, any longer, doubt her independence or resolve.

“But if doubt remains, consider what her parents have put her through. On national television, they’ve made their own daughter the whipping girl for every constituency with a point of view.

“The antichoice movement.

“The Christian right.

“The disabled.

“The embittered.”

Sarah’s voice turned sardonic. “Not to mention Mary Ann’s own doctor, and—last and worst—themselves.

“And under what authority do they heap abuse on their fifteen-year-old daughter?” Sarah paused again. “The Protection of Life Act—the purpose of which, they tell us, is to help parents ‘protect’ their daughters.

“Nothing can discredit this statute more completely than the Tierneys’ invocation of it. This law has allowed them to impose their will on their own daughter—at whatever peril to her health—backed by a babel of conflicting voices, with every conceivable agenda except Mary Ann’s well-being.

“All
this
has happened to Mary Ann Tierney for the most arbitrary reason—
who
her parents are.” Once more, Sarah glanced at Martin Tierney.

“Or, the Tierneys’ witnesses would say, how very
admirable
her parents are. So let’s consider all the
less
‘admirable’ parents this court will empower if it upholds this law in the name of Martin and Margaret Tierney.

“Fathers who rape their daughters. Or beat them. Or throw them out for becoming pregnant. Or are too alcoholic and dysfunctional to care. Or“—Sarah stopped abruptly—“who will murder their own daughter if she tries to go to court.”

Leary shook his head. “You go too far.”

“I think not,” Sarah shot back. “Congress can legislate all it likes, but no law can create a Norman Rockwell family, or give most teenage girls the courage or resources to protect themselves. This law
will
create more emotional trauma,
more physical abuse, more teenage mothers denied appropriate medical attention. More girls
will
give birth to their own brothers or sisters. And, yes, more young girls
will
die.

“And for
what?
Because forcing a minor to abide by her parents’ orders will make them ‘closer’ as a family?” Sarah inclined her head toward Martin Tierney. “This court has seen for itself the impact on
this
family. I need not dwell on that.

“So let’s turn to the final justification for this law: that Congress has balanced a woman’s life and health against society’s interest in protecting the potential life she carries, once that life is viable.

“The facts are these: late-term abortions are one out of six
thousand
. They occur when there is a threat to the mother’s life or health, or when there are severe fetal anomalies. And, in all likelihood, both.

“
That
, Your Honor, is why Mary Ann Tierney is here.

“One can start by asking whether such a fetus is ‘viable’ within any humane meaning of the word, or whether the ‘life’ it ‘enjoys’ on delivery—whether measured in seconds, minutes, hours, or days—is a life as we understand it. But the more basic question is, who decides, and at what cost?

“Congress?

“The Tierneys?

“Or“—Sarah faced Mary Ann, lowering her voice—“the fifteen-year-old who must live with the consequences.”

As Mary Ann gazed resolutely at the judge, Leary looked away. “A young woman,” Sarah told him, “who has shown herself thoroughly capable of weighing that decision, then making it. A young woman who has had to justify herself in court, in front of millions, as no mother—adult or minor— ever has.”

Slowly, Sarah turned to Leary. “A law that denies her right to decide is irrational.

“A law that says a cesarean section is not a risk to physical health is inhumane.

“For either reason—and both—this law violates the right of choice established in
Roe v. Wade
. As, I submit, does a law which imposes the
emotional
scars of a break with her parents, the ordeal of a court proceeding, and the risk—perhaps the reality—of a life without children of her own.” Pausing, Sarah spoke with quiet scorn. “For a woman, Your Honor, this
involves something more than the inconvenience of altering a prom dress.”