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gray dots on a screen. Your guy might have thought he saw a penis, but maybe he saw the umbilical cord, or some other gray specks. There’s a guy here who’s the best sonographer in the world. He’s going to look at the baby. But he’s Catholic and a right-to-lifer with eleven kids, so don’t let him know you’re considering an abortion.”
    “He would allow his religious beliefs to affect the way he reads a sonogram?”
    “Of course he would. A doctor is a person. We see what we see through a variety of lenses—the lens of science, of politics, religion, our personal passions. Reading a sonogram is not an exact science. If you mention abortion, he’ll view the ambiguous gray dots on the screen through his right-to-life lens, and I guarantee you he will not see a penis.”
    Raushbaum swiveled his chair toward Michael. “What do you think about all this?”
    “Me? Oh, Jesus . . . a lot of different things. I’ve seen Alice in the throes of this terrible unhappiness and . . . I don’t recognize her. And I think her . . . misery is actually less about having a baby than it is about losing her freedom to choose. She feels imprisoned, and it’s . . . it’s making her go crazy. So for the first time in my life—and I come from an extremely conservative, antiabortion, southern Christian family where the abortion issue is totally black and white, no room for discussion—I’m sick just imagining what my family would even think if they knew we were talking to you about—For the first time, I’ve had to genuinely think about abortion rights. It’s always been an abstraction. I’ve been politically in favor of choice, but uncommitted on the personal side. Because it’s suddenly so real and imminent a question in our lives, I . . . for the first time I understand the importance of a woman’s right to choose. But the equally compelling personal truth for me is that there’s a baby. Our baby. My baby. And I don’t care if she has a penis or two penises or a salt-wasting disease or three heads or . . . I can’t stand the thought of this baby being aborted. So if Alice has an abortion, I won’t go to Wichita with her. And I might not be here when she gets back. I’ll have my own unbearable sorrow about losing this baby, about endorsing this decision. I’ll have that sorrow for the rest of my life. But I don’t want Alice to kill herself. So she should do what she needs to do. That’s what I think about all this.”
    Dr. Raushbaum nodded at Michael, leaned back in his leather chair, chewed on his cigar, and looked at me.
    “I have a two-year-old grandson. He’s cute, but I get bored of him after twenty minutes. It takes forever to raise a child till it’s old enough to be interesting. I couldn’t do it again. But I’m not you. I wonder what you’ll decide.”
     
     
    “I don’t see a penis! I see a large labia and a large clitoris!” shouts the evangelist sonographer from New York Hospital at the gray shapes on the monitor. He knows the referral has come from well-known abortion doctor Dr. Raushbaum, who considers him the best sonographer in the world.
     
     
    “I see a small penis and partially fused scrotum,” declares the sonographer in Boston, whom Dr. Rosenbloom considers the best sonographer in the world, to whom she has sent me for a third opinion.

    Michael and I halfheartedly pretend the four-hour drive home from Boston is an ordinary outing. We don’t talk about the contradictory, inconclusive readings we’ve gotten from the world’s greatest sonographers. We don’t talk about Wichita. We listen to the radio, switching to stations with the best reception as we drive south. I briefly get National Public Radio.
    “In the next few weeks, somewhere in the world, a baby will be born. And that baby will bring the world population to six billion! The UN has prepared a report called ‘The World at Six Billion’ in response to the global attention to this historic milestone and widespread