I just finished reading Michael Crichton's "A Case of Need". I found it in our bookshelf a couple of days ago, and I started reading it, partially to avoid studying for my finals (and also because it's one of the few Crichton books I haven't read).

In short, it's a medical mystery/thriller surrounding a botched abortion in pre-Roe-vs-Wade Boston. One of the things I found interesting was the fact that it's one of the very few (only?) "typical" medical thrillers from Crichton --his more recent works seem to lean more towards SciFi ("Jurassic Park", "Congo", "Sphere", etc). On the other hand, "Case" did remind me a lot of the TV series ER, for which Crichton was (is?) the screenwriter, especially where he describes the ER (or "EW" -Emergency Ward- as it's referred to in the book).

The second point I found interesting was how neutral he (or the first person narrator) managed to be with regards to abortion. Perhaps it would've seemed more controversial at the time, considering how abortions were still illegal, but by today's standards the narrator comes out as being strikingly neutral. Apart from not trying to make a judgement on the moral issue surrounding abortions, he also includes a summary of six arguments for and against abortion in the appendix, which is perhaps the best objective summary of the various opinions I've seen to date.