I hope, and just about believe, that after much dithering and changing course, I'll finally be publishing my near-future novel Donation this coming spring. And here's a snippet.
Donation involves the issues that arise when the federal government controls artificial womb technology. In this scene, federal judge Alexandra (Alex) Rayner examines some papers filed in a lawsuit where a woman who "donated" her embryo (now a fetus) is trying to regain her parental rights, and the Bureau of Reproductive Safety is fighting her tooth and nail.
I adore Judge Rayner. As one character says, she's what I'd like to be when I grow up -- or would be if I weren't more comfortable these days writing books.
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Judge Alexandra Rayner sat back in her rocking chair, luxuriously comfortable in her long bathrobe, quilted slippers on her feet – she’d finally found slippers neither too short nor too wide! -- and contemplated the opening motions in what promised to be a most interesting case. Interesting, and in unfamiliar territory: federal judges like herself were rarely drawn into family law disputes. Only the fact that the clinics were established under the aegis of the federal government had brought this matter to her court.
There was, of course, the threshold question: should she recuse herself because of the abortion all those years ago? She thought not. She had made that choice in a very different world, a world with different options and different consequences. That history did not predispose her to take any particular view of the present controversy.
So. The plaintiff wanted the adoption process frozen. Problematic, at least if continued for long, given Alex’s inability to freeze fetal development to match.
The plaintiff also wanted an order giving her access to the incubator, so she could talk to the fetus. Meanwhile, the clinic, should Alex decline to dismiss the case immediately, wanted carte blanche for the chosen adoptive parents to do the same, pointing out that for them to do so was normally routine. (And just when had those parents been chosen? Not that it mattered for her purposes.) She would ask for affidavits from experts about the importance to and effect on the fetus of hearing voices that could eventually be familiar and familial. And what about other voices? Did the nurses, or technicians, or whatever they were called talk to the incubators? How much? Were human voices in general more important than particular voices? Did even the experts know? Well, whether or not they knew, they’d try to sound as if they did.
Hmmm . . . That would be a possible solution. Indeed, uniquely rational. If the affidavits supported the claim that human voices, or the voices of family members, played an important developmental role, then the parties — plaintiff and individual defendants — could supply the same. Separately, and taking turns.
She could wish to be a fly — a temporary and sentient fly — on the wall when these competing would-be parents had their visits. What would they want the fetus to hear? What would they be unable to keep themselves from saying? Such knowledge would be helpful indeed, if her job was to play Solomon and send the baby where it would be best nurtured and loved. But she had no such mandate, and thank God for that.
Though come to think of it, Solomon had been asked to determine, not the best mother, but the true one. Maybe not so far, after all, from her own more legalistic duty.
And this degree of woolgathering meant it was time she went to bed. But first, she would send herself a note as a reminder. If she did order access to the fetus, she had better make sure the clinic did not take advantage of the logistics to record or listen in.
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Back to final(??) revisions. Wish me luck!
