Protect and Defend

by Richard North Patterson

  “And how do parental consent laws impact families?” Sarah asked.

  “Their stated purpose is to promote family unity. But their actual effect is contrary—”

  “I’ve had teenage daughters,” Leary interjected. “Sometimes they didn’t like the rules I set. But part of being a parent is helping them make wise choices, sometimes by setting limits. Now that they’re parents, they thank me for it.”

  Looking up at him, Blake’s eyes narrowed, and she measured her words with care. “If we’re talking about makeup, or curfews, or homework—most teenage issues—we’re completely in accord. But if you took your daughter to court on national television, and in essence said, ‘You’re a delivery system for a fetus with little hope, incapable of deciding for yourself how that will affect your capacity to bear more children,’ she might be a bit less grateful.”

  Watching Leary’s annoyance, Sarah was torn between amusement and concern; though Blake had reduced him to wordlessness, it might come at a price. Smoothly, Blake continued, “You’re well aware, I know, that the normal parental paradigms don’t apply to this situation. A girl who lacks the capacity or experience to choose is a poor risk as a mother. And far too often, her ‘love’ for a child reflects the narcissistic hope that the child’s love for her will fill an emotional need that her own parents have failed to fill. A far cry from your daughters, I’m sure.”

  Blake was astute, Sarah realized; she had first put the judge off balance, then given him an out. Taking it, Leary asked, “What conclusions did you reach about Mary Ann?”

  “That she’s typical for her age and experience,” Blake answered promptly. “And, as such, completely capable of making this decision.

  “At fifteen, the ability of a minor to understand the impact of abortion versus motherhood is little different than that of young women at twenty-one, or even twenty-five. And a survey of young women after a first-trimester abortion shows that only seventeen percent suffer from any appreciable guilt—”

  “Shouldn’t they,” Leary interjected, “by the third trimester of pregnancy? Which is where Mary Ann Tierney is now.”

  Unruffled, Blake looked at up Leary. “Where Mary Ann is now,” she answered, “is in your courtroom. That shows a strength of character which speaks well for her ability to make this decision, then live with it.

  “The best predictor of emotional peace with such a decision is the ability to make it for yourself. And one of the two leading predictors of emotional damage is a nonsupportive emotional environment.” Once more, Blake glanced at Martin Tierney. “Which is what we have here.”

  Tierney stood at once. “I understand that expert witnesses have latitude,” he said to Leary. “But I object to Dr. Blake’s bias regarding our family.

  “The world of Dr. Blake is a foreordained moral dead zone, where the decision to abort is the only measure of sanity, and parental reservations make us—or any family— dysfunctional. When Mary Ann at first resolved to bear our grandson, it meant that she was narcissistic. When she decided to abort, it meant that she’d become emotionally healthy. And when we objected, we became a ‘nonsupportive emotional environment.’ But all that really demonstrates is that Dr. Blake’s testimony is worthless.”

  Leary held up a hand. Turning to Blake he said, “In essence, Professor Tierney says you’re offering cookie-cutter conclusions, where everyone and everything fits your preconceptions.”

  “I have no preconceptions,” Blake replied. “The seven hours I spent with Mary Ann are informed by fifteen years of seeing other teenagers, and by extensive research—mine and others’. But I base my opinion on Mary Ann herself.

  “When Mary Ann first became pregnant, she imagined an uncomplicated pregnancy which would make her boyfriend love her. That’s not uncommon, nor confined to teenagers. Add Mary Ann’s respect for her parents’ opinion, and her passivity is unsurprising.

  “The sonogram was a wake-up call. Mary Ann realized that this was not the normal child every mother hopes for, and that complying with her parents’ beliefs meant that she might never have another. Which brings me back to whether parental consent laws are either necessary or desirable …”

  “I know you have an opinion.” Leary had begun his regimen of what Sarah thought of as aerobic judging—cocking his head, rocking back and forth, fidgeting with his tie, interrupting and looking more pleased with himself than when forced to listen passively. “What I don’t know is what it’s based on.”

  “Research,” Blake responded. “From 1997 through 1999, three colleagues and I surveyed seven hundred pregnant minors living at home in California, where there was no state law mandating parental consent.

  “Eighty percent of minors involved their parents in deciding whether to abort, suggesting that a functional family doesn’t require Congress to force them to communicate. In ninety-five percent of those cases, the parents supported their daughter’s decision, regardless of what it was—”

  “What about the other five percent?” Leary interjected. “Is the only measure of a healthy family parents who acquiesce in whatever their teenage daughter wants?”

  “No,” Blake responded coolly. “Another measure is that the father doesn’t have sex with her, or beat her, or throw her out for becoming pregnant. And the leading cause of late-term fetal anomalies—those impacted by this law—is incest.”

  There was little risk, Sarah realized, that Leary’s intervention would unnerve Jessica Blake—the risk was that she would embarrass him on television. “What all of these laws demonstrate,” Blake told him, “is the shocking—or deliberate— naïveté of lawmakers with respect to dysfunctional families. Imagine explaining to your mother that your father made you pregnant, or watching him beat her for your sins, or selling your body to abusive strangers because you’re homeless and have a child to support. We saw those cases, numerous times …”

  “What about the Tierneys,” the judge persisted. “A normal, loving family where the parents will love and support their child and their grandchild? Doesn’t that happen more often than these difficulties you mention?”

  “Where the minor wants an abortion,” Blake answered, “and her parents object? No. That’s just as well: the unwanted children of unwed mothers have a far greater propensity to drop out of school and to commit acts of violence. Over the long term, an unwilling parent is less likely to be a good parent, regardless of who the grandparents are.

  “But that aside—and even in a loving home—the negative effects of having an unplanned child include depression, a lack of self-esteem, and a sense of hopelessness.” Blake glanced at Mary Ann Tierney. “That reflects some very harsh realities—statistically, unwed minors have less education, and a far greater chance of being economically marginal. Only five percent of women who have children when they’re under twenty-one finish college; over twenty-one, and almost half get their degree …”

  “I’m thinking about adoption,” Leary objected. “Doesn’t giving a child to a loving home create more satisfaction than abortion? Or is that depressing, too?”

  “This case isn’t about an adoptable child,” Blake responded. “Cases of late-term abortion seldom are. If that weren’t so, Your Honor, I’d be asking the very same question you are. Because we’re in accord—no civilized society prefers abortion to adoption.”

  Watching, Sarah blessed the witness; with surprising tact, she had given Leary an exit, defusing their debate. “Could you elaborate,” Sarah asked Blake, “regarding the impact of this law on the Tierneys?”

  “No one seems to ask how this girl got pregnant in the first place, besides the obvious—a crush on an older boy. So I asked.” Blake looked at Mary Ann Tierney with concern. “According to Mary Ann, she couldn’t talk to her mother about sex, and she knew that—for religious and moral reasons—her parents don’t believe in birth control. The one thing she recalls her mother saying about contraception for teenagers is that it promoted sex.”

  Focusing on Blake, Sarah tried to block out
the anguish this testimony must produce, both in Mary Ann and Margaret Tierney. “How does that affect Mary Ann?” she asked.

  “Mary Ann,” Blake continued, “believes that her parents’ ‘rules,’ combined with their silence, left her unprepared to deal with her feelings for Tony—either emotionally or on the practical level of preventing pregnancy. Add their insistence that she bear the child that’s resulted, at whatever risk, and she feels great resentment toward both parents.”

  At the edge of her vision, Sarah saw Martin Tierney gaze at his daughter with infinite sadness.

  “Is there any way,” Sarah asked, “that the Tierneys can repair the damage?”

  Blake frowned. “The two things which could help Mary Ann the most,” she answered, “are out of their control. First, that the baby dies at once. Second, that Mary Ann is able to bear more children—which, in the best of circumstances, she won’t know for years.”

  “Will these things help repair the relationship?”

  “It’s hard to know.” Blake’s brow knit, and she seemed to study her folded hands. “One thing she said to me is critical: ‘I got the wrong parents, Dr. Blake. How many families would take their own daughter to court?’”

  In the quiet courtroom, none of the Tierneys—parents and child—could face each other.

  Sarah allowed the judge, pensive now, to regard the stricken people before him. “No further questions,” she said, and then Leary called a recess.

  NINE

  WHEN MARTIN TIERNEY rose to cross-examine, Sarah felt a hush descend. Beside her, Mary Ann gazed listlessly at the table.

  Tierney himself appeared hollowed out—his eyes were bleak, his bearing less erect. Blake regarded him from the witness stand with an unflinching attention which, Sarah guessed, she maintained only with great effort.

  “What,” Tierney asked her, “are your religious beliefs, if any?”

  Startled, Sarah stood. “I object, Your Honor. The question invades the witness’s privacy, and has nothing to do with her testimony.”

  “This case invades our privacy,” Tierney countered with sudden anger. “The media invades our privacy. Ms. Dash and the witness invade our privacy. As for whether religious beliefs are irrelevant, Dr. Blake has treated ours as a symptom of familial dysfunction. It’s only fair to ask Dr. Blake what, if anything, she believes in. Besides herself.”

  “Go ahead,” Leary said to Blake. “Answer the question.”

  Blake hesitated, then faced Tierney. “I was raised as an Episcopalian,” she answered tersely.

  “And now?”

  “I have no formal beliefs.”

  “Do you believe in God?”

  Blake glanced at Sarah. But they had not expected, or prepared for, this line of attack. “Not as a patriarchal figure,” she responded. “Beyond that, I believe that there’s a balance in nature—that the good we do creates more good, and the evil we do to others harms ourselves. But whether that reflects a divine presence, or what its nature might be, is impossible for me to know. Or, with respect, for you to know.”

  For a moment, Tierney regarded her in silence. “Do you believe that life is sacred from the moment of conception?”

  Blake’s brow furrowed in thought. “What I believe,” she answered, “is that a fetus is a potential life, worthy of respect. But not inviolate in every circumstance.”

  “Is it inviolate in any circumstance?”

  Blake hesitated. “Without an example, I don’t know how to answer that.”

  “All right. Do you believe that a woman—even a minor— has the right to abort a fetus if she wants to?”

  “After careful thought, and prior to viability, yes.”

  “What about without careful thought, Dr. Blake? Does she have the absolute right, for any reason, to snuff out this ‘potential life’?”

  Blake folded her arms. “I might not approve of her reason. But I believe she has that right.”

  “Suppose that a woman in the eighth month of pregnancy, with a fully viable and healthy fetus, decided that having a child was too stressful. Does she have the moral right to abort that fetus?”

  “Objection,” Sarah said at once. “That’s not the law, nor is it this case.”

  “It could be,” Tierney answered. “Much like her uncertainty regarding the existence of God, Dr. Blake can’t know that our grandson won’t be ‘normal.’ And she bases much of her opinion on the emotional damage to Mary Ann—”

  “I’ll allow it,” Leary interrupted. Powerless, Sarah sat.

  “The circumstances are different,” Blake answered. “I’d have to know more …”

  “But morally you don’t rule it out.”

  There was a long silence, and then Blake shrugged. “Regardless of the woman, or her circumstances? No.”

  “It seems, Dr. Blake, that you have difficulty imagining any circumstances in which abortion isn’t a woman’s right.”

  Blake straightened. “No one likes abortion,” she replied. “I surely don’t. The question is what harm you do by ordering pregnant women to have children. As you’re about to find out.”

  Watching, Sarah felt a wave of relief—Blake was holding her own. Softly, Tierney asked her, “Do you doubt that Margaret and I love Mary Ann? Or that it’s possible for us, believing as we do, to love our daughter and our unborn grandson?”

  “No. I don’t doubt either.”

  “Yet you ascribe to Mary Ann the feeling that we’ve chosen him over her. Is that a mature reaction?”

  Blake adjusted her glasses, and then met Tierney’s eyes again. “I wouldn’t call it mature or immature. Under the circumstances, I’d call it understandable.”

  Tierney put his hands on his hips. “And based on seven hours with our daughter, you believe you know—better than Margaret and I—how violating her own religious beliefs would affect her.”

  “Yes,” Blake answered. “Based on that, and fifteen years of experience in treating and studying adolescent girls.”

  “But Mary Ann is a particular adolescent girl, with whom we have fifteen years of experience. For the record, did you try to interview us?”

  “No.”

  “Or her teachers?”

  “No.”

  “Or her relatives?”

  “No.”

  “Or her priest?”

  “No.” Blake’s voice rose slightly. “Mary Ann familiarized me with her family life, as well as with the viewpoint of her relatives and priest. If you’re suggesting that their opposition will make abortion more traumatic, I’d answer that it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. For which you bear the most responsibility.”

  Stymied, Tierney seemed to gather himself for a fresh assault; to Sarah, it seemed that all of his anguish and humiliation was focused on Jessica Blake. “Isn’t it true,” he demanded, “that the emotional impact of late-term abortion is far more severe than in the first or second trimester?”

  “It can be, yes. Because it almost always involves severe fetal anomalies in a wanted child.”

  “Didn’t Mary Ann want this child?”

  “Before the sonogram? She believed she did.”

  “‘Believed,’” Tierney repeated mockingly. “So wanting a child is a transient feeling? Might wanting to abort it be a transient feeling?”

  Blake hesitated, breaking the rhythm of their conflict. “Professor Tierney,” she said, “why don’t you turn, and look at your fifteen-year-old daughter. She’s gone to court, in the face of your opposition, to safeguard her capacity to bear children. Tell me that’s a ‘transient feeling.’”

  Frozen, Tierney stared at her. It was Leary, in an involuntary reflex, who turned to see Mary Ann gaze steadily at the back of her father’s head.

  “Do you believe,” Tierney demanded, “that adoption is traumatic for the mother?”

  “In many instances, yes.”

  “And in those instances the mother should take the fetus’s life, to spare herself more pain?”

  “Should? No.”

&nbs
p; “But she has that right.”

  Blake hesitated. “Yes.”

  “So the mother is all, the unborn child nothing?”

  “That’s not my position,” Blake said with asperity. “And no one will be lining up to adopt this child.”

  “Two people are,” Tierney retorted. “Margaret and me. We care about him, and our daughter, more than you can ever know. That’s why we’re here.

  “I don’t need you to make me look at her. We don’t need you to explain her to us. We’ve loved her since the day she was born, and we’ll love her long after you’ve forgotten what little you know of her. So never, ever condescend to us the way you have. Let alone flatter yourself that you know best.”

  Blake stared back at him. Angry, Sarah stood. “That’s not a question,” she said. “It’s a speech, and an offensive one.”

  Ignoring Sarah, Tierney stared at Jessica Blake, as though to underscore her arrogance. “No further questions,” he said.

  Rising for redirect, Sarah asked, “Do you contend that religious beliefs have no place in the area of abortion?”

  “I think they’re quite important. The question is whose beliefs—mine? Congress’s? The Tierneys’? Or are Mary Ann’s beliefs the ones that matter most?” Glancing at Martin Tierney, Blake said firmly, “I’ve concluded that only Mary Ann is capable of deciding what her beliefs are, and what role they play in her decision.”

  With that, Sarah prepared to sit down.

  Blake leaned forward. “I’d like to add one thing more.”

  “Please do.”

  “Religion can yield some curious inconsistencies as to how we value life. Recently, my colleagues and I surveyed states with the most restrictive laws to curb abortion—many of which laws were enacted at the urging of groups with strong religious ties.” Blake turned to Leary. “What we expected to find was that those states compensated with more liberal programs to support the neediest children, encourage foster homes, provide early childhood education, and facilitate adoption of older children and those with physical or mental disabilities.