I find the latest query posed to The Ethicist to have such an ethically obvious answer as to be unworthy of publication, unless the objective was to demonstrate how weak and intellectually dishonest ethical the position of pro-abortion advocates is.

Here it is:

I’ve always supported a woman’s right to choose, not least because legal access to abortion once saved me from an untenable situation. I also believe that if a woman chooses to abort, her wish should supersede any opposition to it by the father. The physical, practical and emotional effects on a woman obliged to carry a child to term (and to care for it afterward) are, in my view, far more significant than they are for the father.

But what about the reverse? What about a case in which the father (in this case, my son) is adamantly opposed to having a child, but the woman (his ex-girlfriend) wants to keep the pregnancy? While it’s not relevant to the moral question, the pregnancy is shockingly unexpected given a medical issue of the father’s. And the couple’s relationship has almost no chance of success, even without a pregnancy. Given that the woman has neither a willing partner nor a job and is already responsible for a child from a previous relationship, her decision to continue with the pregnancy is viewed by most in her circle as reckless and certain to risk her already precarious mental health. Here, her right to choose to carry the child will have a profound impact on three (soon to be four) people and is likely to be very difficult for all.

Is it right to force someone to be a parent, even if in name only? Many people, me included, would say no if that person is a woman. Recent events have shown how fraught this issue is. And yet a man who does not wish to be, has never wanted to be and was told that his chances of ever being a parent were nil can find himself in a situation where his opposition carries no weight. While it’s evident that he will have financial obligations, what might his moral responsibility be?

What a god-awful, ethically-obtuse letter to be send for publication, never mind circulated by an ethicist! Let’s see:

1.”I’ve always supported a woman’s right to choose—“ Can’t even open the conversation honestly, eh? Right to choose Coke over Pepsi? Right to choose the single life over marriage? Something more than just one woman’s choice is involved here—gee, what could it be?

2. “….legal access to abortion once saved me from an untenable situation.” That doesn’t sound like a medical emergency to me! What was that “untenable situation”…having to go to your high school reunion pregnant?

3. “The physical, practical and emotional effects on a woman obliged to carry a child to term (and to care for it afterward) are, in my view, far more significant than they are for the father.” Wait, did you just refer to that clump of cells you want killed as a “child”?

4. “While it’s not relevant to the moral question, the pregnancy is shockingly unexpected given a medical issue of the father’s. And the couple’s relationship has almost no chance of success, even without a pregnancy.” That’s right, how the pregnancy occurred is irrelevant to the moral and the ethical questions. So what that information doing in the post, except to bias the decision-making process?

5. “Given that the woman has neither a willing partner nor a job and is already responsible for a child from a previous relationship, her decision to continue with the pregnancy is viewed by most in her circle as reckless and certain to risk her already precarious mental health.” Oh. It’s “viewed” by “most in her circle” as reckless, so that should over-rule the woman’s own analysis of the problem. What was it you were saying about “choice”?

6. “Here, her right to choose to carry the child will have a profound impact on three (soon to be four) people and is likely to be very difficult for all.” Hold it: I thought you already said there was a “child” being carried by the woman. When is a child not “people”? Never mind, I know the answer: it’s not a person when it is inconvenient (or untenable) to regard it as a person.

And having that child will be “difficult.” I’m convinced: kill the thing, easier for everybody. Except I’m pretty sure that, applying the Golden Rule here, that “soon to be” fourth person, given the options, would much prefer a “difficult” life than no life at all.

7. “Is it right to force someone to be a parent, even if in name only?” This fails, indeed flunks, the “What’s going on here?'” mandate. If you frame the question falsely, then you cannot reach the ethical solution to the problem. The proper framing is: “It it right to kill a human being, however legally, so that another human being won’t be burdened, inconvenienced or embarrassed by that human being having the opportunity to exist?”

That is a very easy question to answer if one has any functioning ethics alarms at all.

8. “Many people, me included, would say no if that person is a woman. Recent events have shown how fraught this issue is.” An “Everybody does it!” rationalization! The question of whether it is right or wrong is not affected at all by how “many’ people would answer it. Many people are unethical, ruthless, dolts who can’t distinguish ethics from marmalade.

9. “And yet a man who does not wish to be, has never wanted to be and was told that his chances of ever being a parent were nil can find himself in a situation where his opposition carries no weight.” That’s life, kid! Things don’t go as planned, and one often accumulates duties and obligations one would not have chosen. Tough luck. His opposition to allowing another human being to keep living and growing carries no weight? Damn right it doesn’t. The inquirer’s values are completely backwards. Human life trumps everything. A father’s desire to have his nascent offspring be allowed to survive when the mother wants to look spiffy at her reunion carries a lot of weight, and should, because the father is arguing for a human life. A father who wants the unborn child eliminated when the mother does not has no ethical or moral standing at all. None.

And what difference is there between a surprise father who was an eager sex partner certain that the birth control methods in place were effective and another who had been told he was, as they say, “shooting blanks”? Not enough to alter his accountability, or the value of a human life.

10. “While it’s evident that he will have financial obligations, what might his moral responsibility be?” Nice—changing the subject in the very last sentence! The answer to this question is also easy: his moral and ethical responsibility to the child he helped create is exactly the same as it would have been if he had intended to do so. Again: the circumstances of the child’s conception doesn’t alter the ethical equation at all.

In his disgraceful answer, Kwame Anthony Appiah never challenged the unethical framing of the question, and doesn’t acknowledge the life of the child the father wants aborted in any way. “So yes, it may be unfair to encumber your son with the legal entailments — and perhaps the emotional ones — of paternity,” he writes.

It is not unfair to choose to allow a human being to live when that choice may be unwelcome to someone else. It is ethical, beneficent, courageous, responsible, merciful, and right. It is not the mother who will “encumber your son with the legal entailments — and perhaps the emotional ones — of paternity.” The son’s choices and what my father called “the vicissitudes of life” that are doing the encumbering.

Tough. Dear “Name Withheld By Request”: Tell your son to grow up.