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execute people than it does to keep them alive. That was true in Bentham’s day, and is even more true today: the extended legal proceedings, including this very one that we’re all part of right now, plus the inevitable appeals, make it far more expensive to execute a criminal than it is to imprison him or her for life.
    “And, just as important, Bentham said—and, again, I agree—the death penalty is irremissible. That is, there’s no way to undo an error. Of course, the unhappiness that results from a wrongful execution is huge for the death-row inmate. More than that, though, if a society executes an innocent man, and that fact is subsequently revealed when, for instance, the real killer is caught, then everyone in that society feels—or, at least,
should
feel—great remorse at the horrible thing done in the name of all of us. And then—”
    “Thank you, sir. We get the idea. Now, then, what about abortion? If your argument is that punishing the innocent with the ultimate sanction is debilitating for society, then I’m sure the men and women seated here, in the wake of our Supreme Court having recently overturned
Roe v. Wade,
will be gratified to hear that you’re pro-life.”
    “I’m not. I’m pro-choice.” I heard a hiss-like intake of breath from one of the jurors, and saw another one, the bearded white man, shake his head slowly back and forth.
    Belinda Dickerson returned to her desk, and her assistant took a book out of a briefcase and handed it to her—and, like every author, I have the ability to recognize one of my own books at just about any distance, even when it’s partially obscured. “Your Honor, I’d like to introduce this copy of
Utilitarian Ethics of Everyday Life,
by our current witness, James K. Marchuk.”
    Judge Kawasaki nodded. “Mark as People’s one-four-seven.”
    “Thank you, Your Honor. Just to confirm, sir, you
are
the author of this book, correct?”
    “Yes, that’s right.”
    “As you can see, I’ve marked two pages with Post-it flags. Would you be so kind as to turn to the first one and read the highlighted passage?”
    Post-it flags come in many colors; I use them all the time myself. She’d no doubt deliberately chosen red ones; she wanted the jury to be thinking about blood.
    I flipped to the first indicated page, carefully took out my reading glasses, and said: “‘As in all utilitarian thinking, one cannot put one’s own desires or happiness ahead of another’s simply because they
are
one’s own, but in the case of a genetically defective fetus which, if brought to term, will live an unhappy, pain-filled life, terminating the fetus is clearly the path that will most increase the world’s net happiness, for, as we have observed, there are only two ways to add to the world’s total joy. The first, obviously, is to make the people who already exist happier. The second is to actually increase the number of people in the world through childbirth,
provided they will likely live happy lives.’”
Italics, as the saying goes, in the original.
    I shifted uncomfortably in my seat then went on. “‘The corollary to this is that the world’s total happiness is decreased by either making existing people less happy—as raising a disabled child with its attendant emotional and financial costs would doubtless do for the parents—or by allowing more people to come into existence who will be unhappy, as a child born to a life of pain and suffering will be. In such a case, therefore, abortion is perhaps morally obligatory.’”
    The argument was more complex than that, and I dealt with all the objections one might raise in the subsequent paragraphs, but I stopped when the blue highlighting came to an end, closed the book, and looked up.
    You could hear a safety pin drop in that courtroom. The jurors were all staring at me, some with mouths agape, and the color had gone out of Juan’s face. Only Devin Becker looked unperturbed.
    Dickerson let the silence grow for as