Rockabye (Season 7, Episode 9)
Premise: A pregnant 16-year-old beaten in a Manhattan hotel turns out to have planned her own attack after every legal route to an abortion was closed to her.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 7, Episode 9
- 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), ME Dr. Melinda Warner (Tamara Tunie), DA Arthur Branch (Fred Dalton Thompson), Judge Elizabeth Donnelly (Judith Light), Judge Lena Petrovsky (Joanna Merlin)
- Guest stars
- Keri Lynn Pratt as Lauren Westley, Skipp Sudduth as Phillip Westley, John Patrick Amedori as Wayne Mortens, Robert Foxworth as Dr. Lett, Annie Potts as Sophie Devere
- Director
- Peter Leto
- Writers
- Patrick Harbinson
Summary
“Rockabye” opens in a rundown hotel, where a man beats a girl with a lamp and runs off with her purse while a sex worker next door hears her crying for him to stop. The victim, registered as Jane Smith, slips out of the hospital before a rape kit is finished. A discarded bus ticket and a small-town sheriff identify her as Lauren Westley, 16, of Palassi, Virginia, and hotel phone records show repeated calls to the Manhattan Woman’s Sexual Health Clinic, where Dr. Lett cites confidentiality. Her father, Phillip, says she had taken an abstinence pledge. Blood tests show she is about five months pregnant, and the detectives conclude she came to New York because Virginia requires a parent’s consent for a minor’s abortion.
Vice officers find Lauren hiding in a parked car with a lacerated liver. Surgeons save her, but her baby girl is stillborn. Lett says Lauren was already past 24 weeks, too late for a legal abortion. Store video shows a boy buying her food and a rose: Wayne Mortens, a schoolmate from Palassi. The sheriff reveals that Phillip threw out Lauren’s sister when she became pregnant. Stabler lures Wayne to the hospital with a phone call, and he confesses to the beating. Because the fetus never drew breath, Wayne cannot be charged with murder. Warner matches bruises on Lauren’s abdomen to her own watch; Lauren admits she hit herself and asked Wayne to beat her, and Phillip walks out. Wayne says the plan was hers, born of fear that her father would disown her.
Under the law Lauren faces a misdemeanor while Wayne faces a felony, an unjustified abortional act, and Branch tells Novak to plead Lauren out and try Wayne. Wayne’s new lawyer, Sophie Devere, moves to dismiss on equal-protection grounds, and at Branch’s direction Novak persuades Judge Donnelly, a known abortion-rights advocate, to step aside. The new judge denies the motion but rules that the baby be called only “the fetus.” Lauren testifies that a pharmacist refused to sell her the abortion pill, a hospital demanded her father’s consent and the clinic put her off for two weeks over a fever. Novak learns the clinic has never performed an abortion, but Branch refuses to let her make a deal.
Spoiler, the ending: Former clinic nurse Judy Carlton (called Galton in the episode) testifies that Lauren’s temperature was normal and that Lett told her to invent the fever and keep putting Lauren off until it was too late. The jury convicts Wayne of misdemeanor assault in the third degree and acquits him of the felony, leaving him with probation. Lett is arrested for fraud, forging medical records and reckless endangerment. What happens to Lauren is not shown.
Why it stands out
- Keri Lynn Pratt guest-stars as Lauren. Looking back in 2012, showrunner Neal Baer wondered whether the series could still make an episode about teenagers’ access to abortion.
- Fred Dalton Thompson makes a special appearance as District Attorney Arthur Branch; the seventh season was his last on the series.
- Annie Potts plays defense attorney Sophie Devere, and Judith Light’s Judge Donnelly recuses herself at the DA’s request.