When Solomon’s Knife was released last year, the fight for reproductive self-ddetermination seemed to be reaching a peak of verbal (and physical) violence. It is evident now that the peak may not have arrived. The Louisiana legislature has just passed the nation’s most restrictive anti-abortion bill, and Governor Roemer has not yet, as of this writing, vetoed it. Here in Rochester, right-to-life advocates are forcibly barring women’s health clinic doors to all patients—including those nine months pregnant. The “month after” pill, RU-486, is only legal in France, and will probably have a difficult, if not impossible, time running the hurdles to legality in the US.

Victor Koman’s novel takes all the drama of the current struggle, and ups the ante by creating a new alternative for a woman with an unwanted pregnancy. A doctor develops a way to transfer a first trimester fetus from one woman’s uterus to another. (Ovum transfers are now possible in only the first few days of development, before the ovum attaches to the uterus.) The administration of her hospital, mindful of controversy, forbids her to use the technique.

Part unrelenting scientist, part Randian heroine, part moral crusader driven by guilt about an abortion she had at nineteen, Dr. Fletcher performs a “transoption” without hospital permission, without the permission of the woman who came in for the abortion, and without informing the woman who accepts the fetus that the procedure is not yet approved. When Fletcher’s action is discovered, the emotional, political, and legal consequences explode in the nation’s consciousness like a bomb. The dramatic courtroom battle that is generated kept me reading all night, but another battle raged in my mind for days after the book was finished.

For Koman, the actuality of a working, safe procedure to save an embryo while ending pregnancy is tantamount to a revolution — an alternative for those who “wish neither to enslave (or be enslaved) nor to kill. With reservations, I must agree with him. Understandably, many women would choose not to kill a fetus if they could give it away safely to someone who could not produce an ovum of her own. The great majority of women who now give up their babies for adoption, plus others, would surely choose “transoption”, if it were available, rather than adoption after birth. They would find it easier, less traumatic, less disruptive to their lives.

Brushing aside the opposition of those who believe any tampering with natural process is reprehensible, and those who believe women have no right to free themselves — by any method — from the presumed fruits of sex, there will still be some, perhaps many, who would not be able to use the new method on ethical grounds. For those of us who find handing over our fetuses to strangers personally unthinkable, who are unable to give away the responsibility for our children — and I am not advocating this position, only stating that for those of us who can’t escape it — transoption could add another layer of guilt to “the onus of abortion”.

There is one other worry I must attach to this procedure. Although transoption would be, in many ways, a welcome addition to the alternatives available to women who are pregnant, is it all too easy for me to imagine that opponents of abortion might demand that this be the only legal way to end pregnancy. Instead of being able to stop an embryo from growing into a baby, one might be forced to give it away.

Koman’s writing style is not as strong and compelling as in The Jehovah Contract, but the plot, the events, and the ideas carry the book successfully. Solomon’s Knife is science fiction in the great tradition. It extrapolates a solution for one of the most controversial of today’s problems, and allows us to live with the results before they happen. The procedure Koman devises is one that is possible in the very near future. Doctors I have queried have admitted that the technique would not take too many years to develop

given the current state of micro-surgery, someone who reads this book could make it come true. Someone else who has read it might be ready, by that time, to make sure that the procedure remains an option.

(An earlier version of this review was published in the April 1989 edition of Laissez Faire Books.)