Do we pity the man who is, against his will, forced into fatherhood?

Earlier this month, many of my readers objected to my lack of sympathy for men who, unlike women who have the right to get an abortion, find themselves dragged into fatherhood by the women they've impregnated when those women exercise their right to choose and go ahead and have those babies. I doubled down on my opinion here, on July 7th, and the comments thread there was a huge freakout, much of which you can't see now, because we did a ton of deletions. It was so bad that we ultimately had to turn off comments to stop the gush of repetitive abuse.

I hope you remember enough of that discussion to apply it to the specific context of a case in today's news:

Simon Cowell has been pictured for the first time following news that his married lover Lauren Silverman is expecting his baby.

The 53-year-old music mogul...  is said to be 'freaked out' by the news he is to become a father for the first time... Cowell... has been named as a co-respondent in the divorce papers Lauren's estranged husband Andrew filed in the Manhattan Supreme Court two weeks ago, citing adultery as the reason for ending the marriage.... Cowell is likely to be called to the witness stand to reveal not only details of the alleged affair with Lauren but also details of his personal finances, estimated to be in the region of $350million....

While Cowell is said to accept that the baby, due next February, is his, the news of 36-year-old Lauren's pregnancy came as a huge shock to both Simon and his closest female friends including Sinitta and ex fiancée Mezhgan Hussainy - otherwise known as his 'harem.'...

So here's a man who has used his great wealth and fame to acquire what is openly called a harem. All of these women were in a position to use their powers of reproduction against him, either deliberately, accidentally on purpose, or through pure oopsiness. They were playing and playing and playing with Nature's great life force, and Nature dropped a consequence.

‘In the harem hierarchy, Lauren is regarded as the fun, party girl. The other girls have all met her, they know who she is and they have been reduced to tears by this.'

It's fun until it's not. And why are the other "girls" crying? Because they didn't make the big move and bind him and/or his money to them with a baby? Because he was handing out enough cash and good times that they all understood the arrangement, and Lauren broke the rules? How many abortions and attendant payoffs have there been in the harem over the years?

It is as yet unclear whether or not Cowell and Lauren will attempt to make their relationship work for the sake of their unborn child.

There's a reality show for you. Divorce cranking away. The harem in tears. Cranky old bastard who said he couldn't tolerate a kid.

ADDED: The above-linked article has a claim that Cowell and Lauren were trying for pregnancy, but here's an article quoting someone "close to Cowell" saying: "The pregnancy has taken him by surprise. He assumed she was using birth control... Simon thought this was a casual relationship — friends with benefits. The pregnancy was not planned. He is feeling tricked." If that's true, it makes Cowell's case exactly what we were talking about last month.