Birthright (Season 6, Episode 1)
Premise: An attempt to snatch a little girl from a playground leads to a woman convinced the child is hers, and to a fertility doctor who gave away embryos without consent.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 6, Episode 1
- Starring
- Det. Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay), Det. Elliot Stabler (Christopher Meloni), Det. John Munch (Richard Belzer), Det. Odafin “Fin” Tutuola (Ice-T), Capt. Donald Cragen (Dann Florek), ADA Casey Novak (Diane Neal), Dr. George Huang (BD Wong), ME Dr. Melinda Warner (Tamara Tunie), Defense Attorney Roger Kressler (Ned Eisenberg)
- Guest stars
- Lea Thompson as Michelle Osborne, Abigail Breslin as Patty Branson, Viola Davis as Donna Emmett, Ned Bellamy as Peter Carson, David Forsyth as Dr. Stanley Norton
- Director
- Arthur W. Forney
- Writers
- Jonathan Greene
Summary
“Birthright” opens in a Riverside Park playground, where a young man on a bicycle tries to drag six-year-old Patty Branson over a fence by her hair while her father reads nearby. Patty, who has diabetes, tells Benson she met the attacker earlier when he showed her a puppy outside a supermarket. The store manager recalls a blue van with Arizona plates, and a school safety officer reports the same van watching Patty’s school at dismissal. The squad finds it there, and after a short chase the driver proves to be Peter Carson, a licensed private investigator who recovers children in custody fights. Patty picks his young partner, Kenny Pratt, out of a lineup.
Threatened with the loss of his license, Pratt says they were hired to return the girl to her real mother. Their client, Michelle Osborne, says her daughter Anna was taken from a New Jersey Turnpike rest stop at age two, and she shows an age-progressed portrait that looks like Patty. She is charged with conspiracy, and when she breaks an order of protection the detectives learn that records list Anna as killed in the crash that killed her husband. Carson then produces a DNA report showing that Michelle is Patty’s biological mother. Warner finds that the two girls share mitochondrial DNA, making them sisters; both were conceived through in vitro fertilization at the clinic of Dr. Stanley Norton. Norton claims Michelle donated her spare embryos, but the donation box on her consent form was marked with a gel pen that was not sold until after she signed it, and staff statements bring warrants for his records.
Michelle then takes Patty from a class trip to a museum. Benson finds the girl at Michelle’s beach house in Belle Harbor, Queens, and Michelle is charged with kidnapping. She rejects three to five years with counseling; her lawyer, Donna Emmett, hopes an acquittal will open the way to a custody claim. Novak, unsure the law can do justice here, visits Stabler at his children’s basketball game, and he tells her he would want any child of his he did not know about. At trial, defense questioning about Michelle being her “egg mommy” leaves Patty sobbing and begging not to be taken away.
Spoiler, the ending: Michelle stops the trial and offers to plead guilty to end Patty’s ordeal. She receives a suspended sentence for custodial interference and says she will move out of state. An audit of Norton’s clinic then reveals that Michelle had sixteen embryos, not four, and that ten were implanted in other women: besides Patty, she has two daughters and a son she has never met. Any case against Norton is not shown.
Why it stands out
- The season premiere, with Lea Thompson as the mother whose search drives the case and Abigail Breslin as Patty.
- Viola Davis returns as defense attorney Donna Emmett, a role she first played in season 4.
- Stabler’s children Dickie and Elizabeth appear in a scene at a basketball court.