- Moderator
- #101
Hypothetical: You are are at a fertility clinic - it doesn't matter why - and a fire breaks out. You run for the exit. As you are running down the hall, you hear a child screaming behind a door. As you throw open the door, you see a five-year-old boy crying for help in the corner. In the opposite corner is a phial labelled 1,000 viable embryos. The smoke is rising, and you begin to choke. You realise that the room is too large for you to have time to save both the embryos, and the boy. If you try you will die, as will both the boy, and the embryos.
Do you:
- A: Save the boy?
- B: Save the embryos?
There is no "third option". Any "third option" will result in the death of both the boy, and the embryos.
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Now, I rather quite doubt that any anti-abortion advocate will honestly answer this question. They will equivocate, deflect, or simply ignore this post, and hope that no one will take note of it. Because they can't answer the question, and maintain their their primary argument against abortion - that a fetus, from the moment of conception is equal, in every way, to a child.
The rational response, the clearly moral response, is A. Because an actual living child is worth a thousand embryos. 10,000 embryos. Or even a million embryos. This is because they are not the same. Not morally, ethically, nor biologically. This is the rational, ethical, and moral position. However, this position also destroys the anti-abortionists position that an embryo, or a non-viable fetus is a "child", so they will not answer the question.
Many extreme christian righties will tell you that God didn't create the Test Tube baby.. so the 5 year old of coarse..
.And I am not a rightie so don't go there.
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So many that literally none have argued that