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A Case of Need |MY|TWO|CENTS|

A medical thriller that will surely encompass the boundaries of science and art, the boundaries of Law and Medicine.

"Dr. Art Lee is jailed for performing an illegal abortion resulting in the death of a prominent physician's daughter. Dr. John Berry, Art's friend, knows Art is innocent and sets out to prove it. He encounters resistance and apathy from most people, but he tenaciously searches for the real abortionist to clear his friend's name."

Crichton wrote A Case of Need in 1968, under the pseudonym Jeffery Hudson. It combines the wit of John Grisham and Michael Palmer into one great book that somehow succeed to include moral fables and so, moral conclusions.

Art Lee tells us why he decided to conduct abortions, despite the knowledge that he was committing a criminal offence. A woman asked him for an abortion; when he refused, ‘she said she knew of a man in the North End who would do it for two hundred dollars. He had been a medical orderly in the Marines, or something.’ The prospect bothered Art all night:

‘I had a vision of her going to a smelly back room somewhere and meeting a leering little guy who would letch her and maybe even manage to kill her. I thought about my own wife and our year-old baby, and how happy it could all be. I thought about the amateur abortions I’d seen as an intern, when the girls came in bleeding and foaming at three in the morning. And let’s face it, I thought about the seats I’d had in college. Once with Betty, we sat around for six weeks waiting for her period. I knew perfectly well that anybody can get pregnant by accident. It’s not hard, and it shouldn’t be a crime …

‘By morning I had decided that the law was unfair. I had decided that a doctor could play God in a lot of crappy ways, but this was a good way. I had seen a patient in trouble and I had refused to help her when it was within my power. That was what bothered me – I had denied her treatment. It was just as bad as denying penicillin to a sick man, just as cruel and just as foolish.’

But Crichton was not only motivated by the humane pragmatics of legal versus illegal abortion. In one of the seven appendices to this short thriller, Crichton concisely summarises six main arguments for abortion, and their counter-arguments.

With unusual addition of geekish footnotes, A Case of Need will surely find its way in your heart, in your heart, and sometimes because of medical science jargons, in your brain.

4 out of 5. :)

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