Protect And Defend
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4.8 • 5 Ratings
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- £4.99
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- £4.99
Publisher Description
'She was a girl, really, with short red hair and a waif-like slimness. But despite the flowered dress she wore, her belly had begun to show. Immobile, the girl gazed at the clinic as though it were a thousand miles away.'
The young woman is Mary Ann Tierney. She is fifteen years old. Within days her name will be known to millions across America, her court case a television must-watch for everyone from the President downwards. As Mary Ann takes on her own parents and the constitutional law of the United States in a desperate bid to protect her future right to bear children, the ramifications of 'the Tierney case' bring a threat to the new President, Kerry Kilcannon, to his nominee for Chief Justice, Caroline Masters, and to his main rival for the Presidency, Senator Chad Palmer. All have dangerous secrets in their past, secrets that would not only threaten careers, but bring death and tragedy to innocent lives.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
U.S. President Kerry Kilcannon, introduced by Patterson in 1998's No Safe Place, returns for another political dogfight in this meticulously researched, sharply observed tension builder about a Supreme Court nominee mired in the abortion debate. Kilcannon, seeking to counter the court's conservative leanings, has nominated another Patterson heroine, Caroline Masters (Degree of Guilt; The Final Judgment), an appellate court judge of impeccable legal pedigree, yet one vulnerable to attack from the right. The single San Francisco judge harbors a secret: she had a child out of wedlock 27 years ago, a painful ordeal that her critics soon uncover. Masters's struggle for confirmation by the U.S. Senate plays out against the backdrop of another court caseDthat of Mary Ann Tierney, a 15-year-old six months pregnant with a hydrocephalic baby. Citing a new federal law, Tierney's parents, both prolife activists, refuse to allow their daughter to abort. When Tierney's suit seeking to overturn the law reaches the appellate court, Masters's foes work out a backroom deal that requires Masters to hear the case and issue an opinion that could doom her nomination and possibly Kilcannon's presidency. Excelling as both a political novel and a tale of suspense, Patterson's latest takes a provocative look at the ethics of abortion and the power plays endemic to American politics, skewering the Christian Right, the gun lobby and campaign financing along the way. In lesser hands, the book's exhaustive recitation of abortion pros and cons might have spelled polemical tedium, but Patterson's strong characterizations and sensitivity to both sides (though he leans prochoice) illuminate one of society's most bitter and divisive issues.
