“If you were in a burning IVF clinic and you only had time to save either a toddler, or one-hundred embryos, which would you save?”
This is an interesting ethical dilemma that has been presented to many pro-life advocates. However, regardless of what you may answer, the question proves nothing about an unborn baby’s right to life, nor does it justify abortion. The burning building is irrelevant to the debate on abortion.
Let’s say your answer is, “I would save the toddler.” Does that mean that babies in the embryonic stage do not have a right to life? No! What if you would save the embryos, does that prove a toddler does not have a right to life? Once again, no.
How can that be? Well, let’s ask a very similar hypothetical.
This time let’s say you are in a burning building, and you only have the time to save one of two people. It just so happens that one of the people you could save is your own mother, the other is a total stranger. Who are you going to save?
If you choose to save your mother does that mean that the individual you did not save is not a human? Does it mean that they do not have a right to life? Does it somehow mean that it would ever be justified to intentionally murder that person? No, of course not!
Choosing to save your own mother, or in the original question the toddler, does not mean that the other party is not a human being with a right to life. The burning building hypothetical has become a favorite tool of abortion advocates, but it has absolutely nothing to do with whether abortion is wrong and does not disprove the fact that human life begins at fertilization.
Choosing who you will save in a terrible circumstance where unfortunately you cannot save everyone is in no way comparable to choosing to intentionally murder an innocent human being.
Some may further unpack their choice to save the toddler from the burning building by pointing out variables like survivability, pain and suffering, or emotional connection. All these variables can certainly influence a subjective decision in battlefield triage but none of them determine who has a fundamental right to life.
As human beings we do not have a right to life because of what we can do, where we are, how developed we are, or any other metric. We have a right to life because of what we are. This applies to born babies, and babies at the embryonic stage of life.
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