Roasted Embryo Under Glass

First, let's take a moment to analyze the dilemna and the person who might be posing it. When we do so, it becomes immediately obvious that this is not an honest question. The pro-choicers who are asking it do not actually see any dilemna here. They will instantly answer that saving the toddler is the only acceptable choice, and (more importantly) they will not give any serious consideration to saving the embryoes. Furthermore, they will mock you for even considering the possibility of choosing to save the embryoes. Enough said, end of story. When someone tries to pose a dilemna for you that he himself does not share, then you are being set up for some reason.

Further consideration of the question shows its artificial & shallow nature. Why am I in this clinic? Why is the toddler in the clinic with me? Why am I the only person who can save these lives? For that matter, why do I have any reason to know that the embryoes will survive even if I attempt to save them? Most importantly, what prevents me from attempting to save both the toddler and the embryoes? Realistically, I could stick that petri dish in my pocket, grab the toddler, and make a run for it. If you want to fence with your pro-choice antagonist for a while, feel free to ask a few of these questions. Watch as the answers get more and more detached from reality.

Analyzing the Roasted Embryo dilemna proves that it is neither honest nor fair. This is not an attempt to find out how pro-lifers really think. This is not a reasonable question in any conversation that will bear fruit. The questioner is simply trying to trap you. With that in mind, the simplest response that you can give is to refuse to be trapped. "It's a stupid question; I'd save both." Now your antagonist is stuck trying to explain why you can't save both. The various reasons will be unrealistic, silly, or both. Don't be swayed. "I'd save both."

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However, refusing to engage in the dilemna might not be the best choice for you. If you do so, you could miss an opportunity with any rational, thinking bystanders. True, the pro-choicer who actually asks the question is probably unreachable by any human effort, but never forget that there are countless people who are reading, watching, or listening to your debate. While even your best answer might not convince them of the rightness of the pro-life cause on the spot, you could have an opportunity to sow seeds that will bear fruit later.

Less importantly, while "iron sharpens iron," it is sometimes also true that bronze sharpens iron. In other words, while there is much to be learned from engaging in honest debate with other reasonable people, there can also sometimes be a learning opportunity in debates with unreasonable people. Holding your position and defending your beliefs while trapped can be a good way to measure the strength of your own convictions and increase your debating skills. You probably won't be able to "win" (whatever that means in this context), but you might learn a lot in the process of reaching a stalemate.

If you want to engage the Roasted Embryo question, either for the reasons above or for other reasons of your own, feel free to do so. Just be sure that you fully understand what you are engaging. You're walking into a trap willingly. Now, let's see if we can find a way out....

When answering, keep in mind that the dilemna does not actually prove what pro-choicers seem to think it does. The assumption is that choosing to save the toddler means that you don't really believe that the embryoes are fully human. But why should it mean that? Challenge the assumption. In a life-or-death scenario, even one as contrived as this one, there are all sorts of reasons that you might save one person over another. You might even choose to save one person over ten other people. That doesn't mean that the "un-saved" people aren't really people. All it means is that life-or-death situations often require hard choices about who will live or die.

Here are a few return questions to help you challenge the assumption:

• Your house is on fire. You can save either your spouse or your child. Whichever one you choose to save, does that prove that the other one isn't really human?


• While driving down the highway in your family car, you collide with a tourbus from a local orphanage. Your child is trapped inside your car, which has begun to burn. Meanwhile, the ten orphans and their driver are also trapped in their tourbus. You manage to save your child, but then your car explodes and kills everyone else at the scene of the accident. What, if anything, does this prove about the relative humanity of your child versus those who died?


• Terrorists have captured a local landmark building, and they are threatening to kill everyone inside unless their demands are met. An elite counter-terrorism squad attacks the building, but the attack goes wrong. The resulting shootout does kill all of the terrorists, but it also kills 75 out of the 102 hostages. Are the 27 hostages who survived more or less human than the 75 who died?


• In the above question, now suppose that one of the survivors was some kind of VIP, like a political leader or a Nobel-Prize-winning scientist, and that was the reason for the counter-terrorism action which killed the others. Does that change anything? Would it change anything if the VIP was one of those who died?

Ramesh Ponnuru briefly addressed the Roasted Embryo question in The Party of Death, and he raised a related point which I will restate here. There is a substantial moral difference between allowing someone to die, especially in a crisis situation, and actually killing that person. Being pro-life means that we are opposed to killing innocent people. It does not mean that we see no differences between people. If a world-class scientist was going to die without a heart transplant, and a homeless person turned out to have a perfect donor heart, pro-lifers (and most other people, I hope) would oppose killing the homeless person to take his heart. However, if both the scientist and the homeless person were going to die without a heart transplant, and there was only one heart available, someone has to get that heart. It is not hypocrisy for a pro-lifer to notice the differences between the scientist and the homeless person, and for those differences to guide him in choosing whom to save. Yes, we'd like to save every life, but often we can't. If we can't save every life, then how should we choose which ones we save? Some pro-lifers would prefer to avoid the decision altogether and save lives on a first-come-first-served basis, or perhaps leave it up to random chance. Other pro-lifers would engage the decision, weigh the differences, and reluctantly pick which lives to save. There are good arguments on each side, and this is an honest debate that pro-lifers can have with each other ... but the debate does not disprove the pro-life claim that it is wrong to kill innocent people.

Being pro-life does not require us to be ignorant of the differences between people. It simply means that we don't believe those differences are enough to justify deliberately killing innocent human beings, whether the method of killing is abortion, euthanasia, or embryonic stem-cell research. Yet the differences between people can be important. For example, many pro-lifers support laws that ban partial-birth abortion. Supporting such laws does not mean that pro-lifers believe that partially-born children have any more right to life than children who are still fully inside the womb. As another example, many pro-lifers support laws that require women who abort to be notified of their unborn children's ability to feel pain. Does supporting fetal-pain legislation mean that those unborn children who are not sufficiently developed to feel pain are somehow less human? Of course it doesn't. Nor does support for fetal-pain legislation mean that pro-lifers believe that it is okay to kill people as long as they don't suffer. We're simply acknowledging differences between people; in this case, we're acknowledging the differences between people who feel pain and people who don't. If we can't prevent death, we should at least try to minimize suffering.

That last point shows one way for us to engage the Roasted Embryo dilemna. Ten embryoes in a petri dish will not suffer, but the toddler will suffer horribly if left to die in the fire. One could justify saving the toddler as an attempt to minimize suffering. The capacity to feel pain is only one of the differences between toddlers and embryoes. Other differences must also be considered:

• Apart from the toddler's own suffering, leaving her to die will create extreme emotional suffering for her parents, siblings, and any other family members. On the other hand, the death of the embryoes is not likely to create as much anguish, if it even creates any anguish at all. While the parents may feel some connection to their embryonic children, any such connection will probably be tenuous, if only because of the embryoes' fragility.


• The embryoes are likely to be very fragile. As IVF veterans (sadly) know, the chances of any particular embryo surviving to be born are not good even if the embryo is placed into a receptive womb. That's why IVF clinics are prone to create (and sometimes implant) so many "surplus" embryoes: to increase the chances that at least one embryo will survive. Even if they are saved from the fire, the embryoes might well die before they can be born.


• Someone has already invested a lot of time, effort, and energy in raising the toddler. Any investment in the embryoes will be much less significant. While it might seem heartless to compare human lives as if they were works-in-progress, extreme circumstances can call for such thinking.

The above list is not meant to be definitive. I am sure that there are other differences that would be a part of the decision; consider my suggestions as merely a starting point for how to think about this dilemna.

As soon as you mention any differences between a toddler and an embryo, you should probably expect your antagonist to argue that those differences undermine your commitment to the pro-life cause. Worse yet, he might claim that the differences disprove the entire pro-life position. When that happens, remember what we discussed above. Recognizing differences between human beings is only common sense, and it certainly does not prove that those differences can justify killing. The pro-lifer believes that all human beings are entitled to equal protection under the law ... even if the human beings themselves are different from each other. The right to life is intrinsic to all human beings, whether they are black, white, brown, male, female, able-bodied, handicapped, born, or unborn.

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I am not nearly conceited enough to claim that I have the only solution to the Roasted Embryo dilemna. (I am conceited, but my pride has its limits.) If you have a different approach, please share it with me. Likewise, if you have spotted a logical error in my thinking, please let me know about it. My hope is that this post will be a warning to my fellow pro-lifers, as well as an opportunity for us to strengthen each other. "Iron sharpens iron," after all.

Have you encountered this question in your pro-life advocacy? If so, how did you respond?

What, you want my answer? Okay, fine. If you hadn't already guessed, I'd save them both. Who's going to stop me? You? I'll knock you down and then save them both. I hope you're wearing something fireproof....

(cross-posted to Naaman the Ex-Leper)