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 