Michael Berg, Abandoned in the Maze

Abandoned in the Maze

Michael Berg

Bedside Books, 2006, $22.00

ISBN: 1589823001

In the United States, abortion is illegal, which has led to a further split in the classes. The affluent upper class send their pregnant daughters to Europe where they obtain a legal (in Europe that is) prescription for the abortion pill. Those less fortunate Americans give birth, obtain illegal abortions or perform dangerous self-abortions. Thus the prison industry is booming with women inmates, mostly from minority groups who make up much of the poor.

Cheryl Cobb raises her two daughters, seventeen-year-old Irene and twelve-year-old Rita by herself. She works full time as a waitress and as liaison at the women's civil rights group Pop-Con. When Cheryl is arrested and handcuffed in front of her children as a dangerous lawbreaker for her Pop-Con work, her daughters are forced into the state-run Trench Center where they are separated and retrained. Irene never sees momma or Rita again as she is treated as a state prisoner, who must be drugged at all times because the facility makes more money for medicated than non-medicated. Irene's only hope is when she turns eighteen; the state will dump her on the street as human waste.

This is not an easy book to read as Michael Berg extrapolates the position of the pro-lifers by going after the mothers rather than the doctors. Using the current jurisprudence system that cannot arrest people for a "crime" performed in a country where it is legal, Mr. Berg makes the case that outlawing abortion will mean only the poor will be punished. The storyline also assaults the state-run social service systems that make decisions based on money not need as the child once born becomes ABANDONED IN THE MAZE by those who claim life is sacred. Readers will squirm throughout this well-written, realistic, satirical, fictionalized, social commentary.

Harriet Klausner