Hint: it isn’t the question the inquirer is asking…
“My husband and I are thrilled to be welcoming our first child this spring, after an arduous I.V.F. journey lasting nearly two years. We ended up needing an anonymous egg donor, whom we found through an egg bank, to conceive our child. Select family members and close friends who knew that we were trying are aware that we took this route. However, my husband told me that he doesn’t want anyone else knowing that we used donor eggs, and that he is upset that some people already know. He is afraid that in a few years, someone will let slip to the child that they were conceived with donor eggs before we as parents have a chance to tell them ourselves. He believes we’re violating our unborn child’s right to privacy by sharing this fact with others. His fear stems from an experience in his family in which an aunt accidentally revealed to a cousin that his biological father was not the man who raised him. I have pointed out to him that what he fears is not likely to happen, that this is our story to tell as much as our child’s; and I’ve reminded him that we should let our child know how they were brought into this world at as young an age as possible, using language they can understand. Further, I wouldn’t have been able to get through this incredibly difficult and painful process without the small group of family and friends we had to rally around us. It was important to me to be able to share the experience with this group, and with some other good, trustworthy and loving friends. He doesn’t understand or respect this and is depriving me of something I hold dear by insisting on secrecy — and this is what hurts the most. I have pleaded with him to see my side, but he doesn’t budge. Out of respect for his wishes, I’ve now kept it from several additional close friends, which has been painful for me. What could possibly bring him around? Or how could I make peace with his position? And have I really deprived our unborn child of a right to privacy by telling a few people about how the child was conceived? “
Just to get this out of the way, my answer would be, “Tell your silly husband to get over it. Trying to keep these kinds of secrets is eventually indistinguishable from lying. The truth, as they say, will out.”
Did you figure out what I focused on? Know your ethicist! What interests me is this: “He believes we’re violating our unborn child’s right to privacy by sharing this fact with others.“
The Ethicist, a long time contributor to the Times, clearly a progressive-leaning academic at a super-woke school (NYU), accepts that as a legitimate issue in his answer. Yet his employers, virtually its entire staff, definitely most if not all of his NYU colleagues, and definitely most of his students, accept as a matter of progressive gospel that the unborn child has no right to live, and if the mother chooses to treat the fetus or embryo or baby as a wart, a tumor, or an unwanted invader, then that’s what it is. Does the unborn child’s right to privacy magically appear once the mother has decided not to kill it? How does that work, exactly?
Abortion advocates should have to explain these contradictions. They don’t. They can’t.
Ethics Alarms 
I agree that there is a conundrum here surrounding the unborn rights, from the left at least. I did not hear in the story about anyone objecting to the child’s right except the mother. The mother seems to want to Trump the privacy of the child by her desire or need to tell her story. my response would ask her why she has this deep seeded need. both need to go back to a normal natural life since they survived breaking the bounds of normalcy already,
I know of no parent who has shared the story of the conception of their child. That indeed would be of high inch value.
I agree that there is a conundrum here surrounding the unborn rights, from the left at least. I did not hear in the story about anyone objecting to the child’s right except the mother. The mother seems to want to Trump the privacy of the child by her desire or need to tell her story.
my response would ask her why she has this deep seeded need.
both need to go back to a normal natural life since they survived breaking the bounds of normalcy already,
I know of no parent who has shared the story of the conception of their child. That indeed would be of high inch value.
1. Did you intentionally capitalize “Trump”? I left it because I didn’t know. I think Trump Derangement may kill “trump” as a word the way the gay rights movement killed the non-sexual use of “gay.” (Except for bridge players, I bet.)
2. She didn’t object to the child’s rights—she feels the child’s rights aren’t involved, and I agree. My point is and was that people make the unborn’s “rights” appear and evaporate according to what the agenda is.
3. Minors don’t have privacy rights in opposition to their parents’ decisions. If one wants to argue that ethical parents consider a child’s privacy, I agree: I argued for this regarding parents putting their kids’ photos on the web. But everything that a person should consider from an ethical perspective isn’t a right.
4. Stretching the meaning of “Privacy” to grotesque lengths is how the 1973 Supreme Court came up with Roe v. Wade.
5. What? Every parent who tells people that their child was adopted—like my son—shares the story of the conception of their child. My son was obviously conceived when two unmarried Russians had sex without intending to have a child, and instead of aborting him, the compassionate mother asked the state to find him a loving family—which it did.
6. OK, I give up: what word was intended where I’m reading “inch”?
I agree rhat this shouldn’t be kept secret from the child, but unborn rights aside, I kind of agree with the husband that the wife doesn’t need to tell everyone about the situation. She said she’s gotten through with the help of family and certain close friends she’s already told, so why then does she need to tell anyone else?
If the worry is the child finding out the truth, then his objection is based on an unethical reason. If that’s not the concern, why would it matter who knows? The issue is a closer call if, for example, the kid is the offspring of a rapist, or a serial killer. But that’s not the case.
I’m thinking it’s the kind of thing the kid shouldn’t know until it’s time for the birds and bees talk. Sort of in between “you were adopted” and “your father was a rapist”.
While I disagree with the father’s position on family secrecy, there is no inconsistency in accepting abortion but also believing that parents have present obligations contingent on the future existence of their children.
For example, picture a couple who haven’t conceived yet. If they intend to have children, they will hopefully make decisions in the present in order to create the environment they believe their children deserve if and when the children do exist. For this purpose, it doesn’t matter when in the human gestation process the couple thinks a person starts to exist.
They will likely phrase their obligations to their children in the present tense (e.g. “our children deserve X”) as part of developing a mental and emotional bond that will attach to the child in the future, and that in the meantime informs their present decisions that affect the child’s wellbeing. They’re practicing thinking protectively and making decisions that will help their future child, such as staying physically, mentally, and financially healthy.
In other words, the couple is phrasing things as if an as-yet unconceived child has rights that they as parents must uphold, but what they really mean is that they anticipate having a child who has a retroactive right for the child’s parents to have already done certain things in the past to prepare a safe existence for the child.
Whether that’s technically a “right” is arguable, but the parents believe it’s their ethical obligation to any children they will have, and they intend to abide by it.
The inconsistency, EC, is: is this an individual human being? If it is, then the human being has rights. If it has any rights, the right to live is the highest priority among them. If it isn’t a human being, but something else that can be eliminated, erased, aborted, killed…with no ethical or moral problems at all, then the privacy issue is fanciful. In short, they can’t have it both ways, and neither can The Ethicist.
In this situation, it is not necessary to attempt to answer the question of at what point in human gestation a person starts existing. You can believe that if you intend to have children, then you owe it to them to take steps to create a safe environment for them before you even conceive them.
A person can believe that one is not obligated to create children, but if one does, then one is obligated to take other steps prior to those children existing. In that sense, some of a child’s “rights” can exist in the minds of the child’s parents before the child is conceived. I think we both agree there is no right to life <i>before</i> conception, since there is no unique genome to define a new organism.
Does that make more sense?