Well, if they are true to their principles, they will save the 500 zygotes first, and then try to save the baby. I wonder how many of them will have the guts to try to answer this. Few, I suspect.

Steven,
This is too sophomoric for words. These are all human beings. If you knew what a liquid nitrogen tank looked like and how difficult they are to move, you would be embarrassed that you reprinted such a stupid question. The baby will succumb faster, much faster, and is easier to save. A large liquid nitrogen tank takes several people. So theoretically, one could be tasked with saving the baby.
With all the good material out there, this is beneath you.

Not a stupid question at all… If you see zygotes and fully formed babies to be of equal status as all “all human beings” then you’d be morally bound to save the 500 human beings that are zygotes rather than the one human being that is the baby.
And Gerard, for the sake of this theoretical argument, I think we’re being asked to assume that the nitrogen tank had WHEELS on it, like this one…
http://media.mcclatchydc.com/smedia/2007/07/30/16/95-US-NEWS-MED-EMBRYOS-2-RA.standalone.prod_affiliate.91.jpg
…and could be saved as easily as the baby.
Also I think for this thought experiment, we’re being asked to assume that both the baby and the zygotes were equally at risk from the flames at the same time.
So in essence: with all else being equally at risk and equally savable, which do you save?

I’m hardly surprised that Gerard Nadal refuses to consider this a possibility. Like most conservatives, anything that challenges his preconceived notions of life simply do not exist, are not worthy of consideration, or are of the devil.
Simple minds demand simple answers.

That’s all he’s got, it’d be more difficult and the baby would die faster? In the scenario, ALL would die who didn’t get out. There’s no going back for seconds. Whether you die in five seconds, or five minutes, if they can’t go back, you die either way.
What, no extra effort to get /500/ out?

I answered essentially the same question for a leading embryonic stem cell researcher here:
http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2005/october/23.66.html
The article begins:
“You’re in a burning room with a wheelchair-bound adult and a freezer full of blastocysts. You can’t save both the tiny embryos and the adult, so whom do you save?
I was asked this question by Hans S. Keirstead, an embryonic stem-cell researcher at the Reeve-Irvine Research Center in Southern California. He wanted to show that, when push comes to shove, all of us grade human life on a sliding scale. What he didn’t realize was that he was talking to a woman who had once chosen the life of the embryo growing inside her over her own life as she had envisioned it. …”

ds0490,
I note that you did not venture a solution. I guess rabbis mouths may be presumed to lack coherent cognitions.
Timmy C.,
Good point, though a great many cryopreservation tanks are rather large and unwieldy. I suppose most people would save the baby capable of feeling the flames. Of course, the question is designed as a gotcha for those who would. It does not diminish the lives of those in cryopreservation or their humanity to save the one who feels the flames. The argument could be made that most, if not all of those in cryopreservation are there because they are extras, ad stand little chance of ever continuing their development, suffering death from freezer burn.
Finally, the problem with these moronic scenarios is that they are not real world in their scope and application, becoming fodder for equally moronic folks such as ds0490 to sit and heckle from the cheap seats without adding anything substantive. Start with the assumption that it was YOUR baby v. the cryopreservation tank, and see where the answer takes you.
These high school sophomore scenarios do not alter the objective reality of the embryo’s human identity and status. It does highlight the barbarism inherent in creating human beings in vitro and then suspending their development in liquid nitrogen for an indeterminant amount of time.
And for ds0490, I come to that not from a theological perspective, but as a Ph.D. in Molecular Biology applying analysis of embryology and human reason. Got That?

Re:Gerard Nadal
Your analysis of the molecular, cytological, and organismal patterning of the human embryo and fetus? I’m sure that impassioned defense of humans at their earliest stages of development infuriates you and comes across as whining. Too bad. That’s your intolerance speaking.
You study molecular biology and developmental biology for as long as I have (Twenty Years) and see if you can come up with any different analysis. Then try discussing your position as an adult.

Hypothetical scenarios are useful in illustrating a point. The point being made here is that there is a thought process involved in choosing between embryos and an infant. It’s not like you’re having to choose between 2 infants. In that case, it would come down to factors such as obvious physical deformities, level of care being provided at that given moment (a baby on a ventilator wouldn’t survive your rescue attempt), etc etc. We don’t say that the infant is yours, or that several of the embryos are yours — we don’t want your answer tainted with emotional commitments. We want your rationale for your ethics.
When you’re placed between a rock and a hard place (or an infant and a bunch of embryos in a burning building), you must have some reasoning for choosing one or the other. Some people have evaded the question by bringing up a lot of inane details that aren’t relevant to the -point- of the scenario. Suspend belief for a moment and just make the choice. We want to know: is the reason you’re saving the infant because it can feel pain, and the embryos cannot? Or is the infant “more human” than all of the embryos? Abstaining from the game shows you’re just not willing to put yourself to the test of the question; you don’t want to challenge yourself.
Anyway, hypothetical scenarios are not meant to be realistic. They’re meant to put the person being questioned in a situation where they are forced to make a very difficult decision. Would you rather your spouse or sibling be shot to death? Not realistic (hopefully), but your answer (should you be able to arrive at one) might speak volumes about your relationships with both. We could just as easily ask, do you believe infants and embryos stand on equal footing as human beings? And you would reply, emphatically, yes! And then we pose you with this question. It’s tough being challenged.

I guess rabbis mouths may be presumed to lack coherent cognitions.

And I guess if one of us said that about a priest you would be shrieking about anti-Catholic bias.
Welcome to the William Donohue world of bias.

Scott R.
That should read rabbiD mouths, NOT Rabbis mouths (which would get the possessive apostrophe). My DEEPEST, DEEPEST apologies for this keystroke error! No thoughts of religious denomination were ever in my mind. I’ll be more careful in proofreading. Hope you’re doing well.
God Bless.

Wellsy,
As an academic, challenge is how we keep one another sharp. In this debate over the identity and status of the human embryo, especially here on these threads, we have covered in equally agonizing detail the rationale for ascribing human identity and status to the embryo and fetus.
Because the application of scientific analysis and reason brings many, such as myself, to accept that personhood is intrinsic to being, and that personhood carries with it a basal level of dignity, such scenarios become a Sophie’s Choice. Therein lies the banality. Sophie went mad from being forced to arbitrarily decide between sacred and sacred.
Being presented with a Sophie’s choice, instant decision, may not reflect anything deeper than the madness of the moment, and torture the decision-maker for years to come.
God Bless.

Gerard responds: “I note that you did not venture a solution. I guess rabbis mouths may be presumed to lack coherent cognitions.”
Freudian slip there, Gerard? Do you have something in common with a recent goosestepping Bishop featured in Beliefnet blogs?
Always one with a pithy word, and a black and white analysis, but too scared to venture forth and explain your rationale for selecting 500 zygotes over one infant.

ds0490,
See my comments to Wellsy and Scott R.
Your choice?

Wellsey is correct, the thought experiment is not meaning to be reasonable, or plausable, or a real world scenario, but instead to illustrate the reason and ramification behind the definition and value of life one has.
And choosing to save the child because it “can feel pain” MAY be an answer that says: “The baby is in one sense more human, as it has a nervous system” and therefore can feel the suffering of dieing, whereas the embryos do not and cannot.
That may be hour answer.
Or it could be a means to ignore the fundamental quandary, I can’t tell.
Gerard, if in our obviously hypothetical thought experiment, we added one more bit of detail:
Let’s say the child itself was under strong pain relief medication, and we knew it could feel no pain in the oncoming fire, but was otherwise healthy… and both the child and the frozen embryos were equally saveable… which would you choose?

Timmy C.,
All other things being equal, I would probably grab the baby. I believe that the other 500 humans are just as precious and deserving of continuing their lives. Tragically, most of them have parents who do not.
The one baby in a crib has parents who have loved it into being, and then loved it into the post-partum world. This singular child has parents who have not impeded its growth and development and have it in the hospital precisely because they desire that it continue that growth and development.
This child was not aborted. It was desired. It is loved and has a future in its parent’s love. Such love ought to be honored.
No such evidence exists for the babies in the deep freeze. Immersion in liquid nitrogen for every one of those embryonic humans shows parenting that views their continued growth and development as contingent on the parent’s whim. Most, if not all, will never be given the chance as that one singular baby in a crib.
That child is loved and desired. That is the only life which has a guarantee from the parents. If forced to choose, I would take the bird in the hand. I would mourn, as I do, that so many humans have been brought into existence and then frozen, as though their development were a matter of parental whim.
But, as a father of three, including one with autism, I would honor the love that saw this one singular infant through. And I would risk my life to honor that love and that object of parental love, the baby.
But it still remains for the pro-life individual a Sophie’s Choice. Such a choice does not mean that I or other pro-lifers deem the embryo merely ‘potential life’. The human embryo is a distinct member of our species in a well-defined developmental stage, acting consistently within the parameters of that stage. For that stage of development it is whole and complete as an organism. It is thus entitled to the right to continue its development unmolested.
The baby in the crib is having its life and development fostered. Not so for those in the deep freeze. The only sure bet on life is the baby in the crib.
That leaves 500 tragedies with up to 1000 complicit parents.

That’s a lot of assumption. That baby could be in foster care. That baby could be in the hospital because its parents were abusing it.
There could be zygotes in the freezer because the parents are undergoing medical care, anxiously awaiting the moment they can be implanted, a couple with a nursery they already decorated, and a history of years of attempts to get pregnant.
You have NO idea of the history or details. Just a bunch of assumptions.
So, if those facts above are the case, does that change the choice you made?

Karen, this whole damned exercise is nothing but assumption and presumption. Some mother chose that baby and did not abort it. Someone loves that baby enough to have it cared for in a hospital.
Let’s tweak the parameters in another direction. Let’s ask why we are so narcissistic as a society. Why do we think that we can generate new life and then molest it by drilling holes in the embryo’s coat and sucking off a cell or two for analysis which is fraught with false positives and negatives in an attempt to determine ‘keepers’, as though our children were so many striped bass? Why have we permitted implantation of these altered embryos without research on higher vertebrates showing whether there will be long-term sequelae or not?
Let’s ask why we think that parenthood means children are chattel, suspending them in arrested development in cryopreservation? Let’s talk about these experiments and protocols befitting Joseph Mengele. Let’s ask why, as the late Erwin Chargaff, one of the fathers of modern genetics used to fume, biologists should be permitted to practice without a license?
Sorry Karen. IVF parents consent to monstrous protocols, all in the name of having a baby that is not only genetically like them, but consent to tossing the less fit. As the father of an autistic son, a VERY, VERY hands on father, I find that putrid. IVF is the dark side of my profession-Molecular Biology.
You and I have been around the barn on this one before, and I do not seek a personal war with you. But if I must make assumptions in this scenario, then the fact of the baby in the crib is evidence that it was chosen by its mother and loved by someone. Statistically, my wife, a pediatric nurse of 19 years tells me that overwhelmingly it is there because its loving parents brought it there.
So, I choose to honor the love and the loving parents whose baby is the evidence of that love. Since this is a sucker’s argument that sets up the pro-lifer for castigation either way they choose, since I am told that it really isn’t about a real choice, but about values, then that is my choice. I hose to honor the parents who love their child. I choose to make a powerful condemnation of the entire ugly, narcissistic, inhuman debasement of parenthood that is IVF. I choose an ethic of life that rejects the ethics of manipulation that drive IVF. I choose to embrace the handicapped, knowing how my son’s autism has called forth the better angels of my nature and those of everyone he has touched. I choose life in all of its imperfect beauty and singularity. I choose not to soil my Ph.D. and my honor with the big easy money in IVF, and in this I am far from alone.
Above all, I choose to wish you well and every blessing from God, our differences notwithstanding.

“All other things being equal, I would probably grab the baby. I believe that the other 500 humans are just as precious and deserving of continuing their lives. Tragically, most of them have parents who do not.”
An interesting answer. I too would take the infant and leave the zygotes, even if the infant had been abandoned by abusive parents and obviously not wanted. And, since I do not view zygotes on a par with the infant, I have no problem prioritizing the infant over them.
Amazing assumptions that you make to justify letting 500 unborn children burn to death, Gerard. You support a constitutional ban on abortions because these zygotes are human beings, but you would allow 500 human beings die and instead choose to save the one.
Color it however you want, Gerard, but you know the difference between zygotes and infants. I’m willing to bet that had there been 500 infants that you could have saved vs. the one infant, you would have chosen to save the 500.
Clearly you really do not believe what you preach about unborn children, Gerard. Thank you for clarifying that.
The only difference between you and me is that you would mourn the 500 zygotes burning. But you’d let them burn, as would I.

“Karen, this whole damned exercise is nothing but assumption and presumption.”
Gerard, the whole damned debate over abortion is assumption and presumption. You and your ilk would prevent a woman from obtaining an abortion in an instance where her life were being threatened by the pregnancy, all on the basis that the unborn child is an innocent life (even though its presence is, in this instance, damaging the mother and putting her in danger of death).
Yet you clearly value a born infant over unborn children. You make some self-righteous blathering justification for condemning IVF to cover it up, but in doing so you reveal just how little you believe the tripe you put forward about unborn children being innocent.
You state: “Why do we think that we can generate new life and then molest it by drilling holes in the embryo’s coat and sucking off a cell or two for analysis which is fraught with false positives and negatives in an attempt to determine ‘keepers’, as though our children were so many striped bass? Why have we permitted implantation of these altered embryos without research on higher vertebrates showing whether there will be long-term sequelae or not?”
For this reason you would condemn 500 of these unborn children to death? What did they do to deserve that, Gerard? Do you not truly believe that these frozen zygotes, these 500 unborn children, are really innocent?
What did they do to merit being left in the fire while you took the other infant?

Gerard: “But it still remains for the pro-life individual a Sophie’s Choice. Such a choice does not mean that I or other pro-lifers deem the embryo merely ‘potential life’. The human embryo is a distinct member of our species in a well-defined developmental stage, acting consistently within the parameters of that stage. For that stage of development it is whole and complete as an organism. It is thus entitled to the right to continue its development unmolested.”
Bull puckey. You played God and let 500 of them die, and then blamed them (through their parents) for being unworthy of living.
500 abortions, Gerard.

ds0490,
Yes and I would roast marshmallows over the flaming canister. Satisfied?

ds0490,
I cannot go to bed leaving off on such a caustic note. So I leave you with this thought.
Try discourse that is respectful. Gotcha is sophomoric. Had I chosen the canister, you would have said I was a monster who was full of crap. I gave an honest answer to a question that all said was not about real babies burning, but about values.
In your scenario, I didn’t leave a baby in liquid nitrogen. The narcissistic parents in search of a genetic keeper did.
The parents of the infant have loved that child into existence, when the choice to abort was there. They chose life and love, in their own imperfect way, I am sure.
In the real world, I oppose IVF because of its monstrosity. I oppose abortion because of its monstrosity. I choose life, all life because of its goodness and beauty, imperfect as each one of us is.
There was no playing God here. Not when the choice was forced, when death awaited someone. The paents in real life who submerge human beings in liquid nitrogen are playing God.
Intellectually, don’t be dishonest by saying it’s not really about death, but values, then change the rules after the game has been played. Don’t seek another’s opinion just to give yourself occasion to ridicule them for what they believe. That’s why these hypotheticals are so sophomoric. I indulged you to show you why I was initially reluctant.
People here such as Panthera and Pagansister are on the the polar opposite of almost any issue as I am, yet you will note the warm and loving fondness we have for each other, and the commensurate tone of our disagreements.
You could take a lesson from that. I’ll not interact with you again unless you do.
God Bless.

Could you people stop picking on Gerald and say what YOU would do, and why?
I would grab the baby. It is one thing to debate the personhood of frozen zygotes on the net, it is another to make an instant decision when confronted with a situation in which a decision must be made RIGHT NOW. There is a fire. There is a baby, alive, screaming in fear. You react. You don’t start up a complicated moral calculus, you react. If we stopped to figure out all the angles in such situations, our species would have gone extinct long ago.
If there were two babies, neither of them my own, and I could save just one, I would grab the nearest one.
If there were no babies, just the cryo tank? Honestly? I’ll save myself and feel bad about it afterwards. Maybe. I’m not proud to admit that, but it is the truth.
But maybe we can combine this with the other great hypothetical question doing the rounds here: If you were torturing a suspected terrorist into giving you the location of the hospital and he gave you the location of the cryo tank, would you be justified in continuing to torture him until he gave you the location of the one baby?

“Playing God,” I think, is something we’ve been doing for quite some time now. We played God when we decided we’d breed dogs until we got one with the specifications we’d want. We played God when we bred crops to get a yield to our satisfaction. If you want to get really technical about it, we play God whenever we create; we aren’t the fundamental creators, God is. And yet we have made new eyes for ourselves to view the microscopic and the distant; we’ve made new scents, flavors, sensations, technologies, and all sorts of things.
When people pull out the “playing God” aspect of IVF, abortions, stem cell research, I can’t help but point to these other things. God gave us brains for a reason. He also gave us a moral compass and a heart. Therefore, even though we may be playing God at some things, that doesn’t mean it’s a bad thing. If you’re Christian, you believe we were made in God’s image anyway.
Now, back to the point: I would choose the baby. The baby can experience pain and is currently alive on its own. The frozen embryos are not alive -enough- in my opinion to warrant saving them over the infant. You have 1 living being versus 500 opportunities to live. The fact that the parents, physicians, and scientists put the embryos in liquid nitrogen is just an irrelevant detail in the hypothetical situation. It brings in a completely different moral complication for which the scenario is unsuited. If you want to debate the issue of leaving embryos frozen in liquid nitrogen, then you might as well ask why the infant’s parents left it in the nursery to burn.
A whole new can of worms.

Clasqm,
Thanks for the kind word and support ;o)
I’m a bit amused about being told that I”M the one playing God. It betrays a certain lack of appreciation for ancient literature.
The Greeks spun tales of the gods setting up predicaments for mortals and sitting back to enjoy the show, much the same as setting up impossible scenarios such as this. To then accuse the mortal of playing God seems curiously backwards.
As for people not answering, that’s because they aren’t really interested in respectfully exploring moral issues. It’s easy to set a trap for people we disagree with by setting up a no-win situation and then ridiculing them. You see how long it took for some to show their true colors.
These variants on the lifeboat scenario seldom provide a jumping off point for serious moral discussion. On this topic, a serious individual would pose a series of questions inquiring as to what biological attributes of the embryo and fetus lead one to impute certain metaphysical attributes and legal standing.
But that requires seriousness and maturity.
Again, Steven, you are an extremely intelligent fellow. You can do better than this kind of stuff. Red meat keeps the bottom feeders at a distance.

Wellsy,
There is much in your post that is true. For millenia, we have been engaged in the sort of genetic engineering that you discuss, in animal husbandry and in crop breeding. Through mastery of selective breeding, we use our God-given human reason and fulfill the commandment to be fruitful, multiply and subdue the earth.
Note to gotcha-playing bottom feeders: This is what a serious discussion between serious people looks like. Pay attention and learn something.
Back to you Wellsy. IVF represents a departure from the moral norms that have governed human sexuality and reproduction in several key respects.
First, I believe it’s safe to say that humans have never practiced reproduction in any way remotely resembling animal husbandry. We tend to select traits in our spouses that please us, knowing that childbirth holds no guaranteed outcomes.
Next, the winnowing of offspring for extrinsic, accidental qualities of being has always been regarded by civilized societies as barbaric. The Chinese allowing female babies to die by exposure comes to mind. IVF dresses up eugenics in clean, antiseptic jargon and confers the mantle of scientific respectability to an old and grubby idea.
IVF treats new human beings as objects, property to be disposed of at the discretion of the parent. It obliterates the concept that our children are NOT property, but human beings entrusted to our care. To underscore the dehumanizing influence of IVF, let us assume that the cryopreservation tank in the hypothetical exploded in the fire. Would the parents of the embryonic humans stored there sue the hospital? For what? What would be the language of such a suit? The language would tell the story.
Then, there is the issue of taking the reproductive act outside of the bedroom, outside of the loving embrace of husband and wife. In IVF, the parents are no longer the agents of procreation, begetting children within the most intimate expression of love. In IVF, they are relegated to the sidelines in the status if observer as physicians, scientists and lab technologists manufacture new life, then sort through the new humans in search of keepers.
True, many do not make it under natural conditions in utero, but the moral landscape is very different. Babies conceived in utero and who are genetically or cytologically destined to die in short order do so as a consequence of intrinsic defect. The mother only wills that they live.
In IVF, the mother and father contract the services of lab staff to kill off those deemed to be defective, who might well have lived. Here the parents make an act of will to kill their offspring in the name of clinical efficiency. As I said, protocols worthy of Mengele.
How long do we suppose it is before insurance companies will no longer insure the offspring of those with family histories of genetic diseases unless the parents submit to IVF and genetic screening? Sound too fantastic? Parents do it for far less financial gain.
If there is nothing sacred about the embryo, why not? Anything goes.

“Note to gotcha-playing bottom feeders: This is what a serious discussion between serious people looks like. Pay attention and learn something.”
Condescend much?

Michael,
Read the rest of the thread. In my college classes I encourage the students to voice their reasoned positions. I’m not invested in their arriving at my world view, but in acquiring the capacity to see their opponent’s point of view, regardless of what that may be. The only thing do not tolerate is this sort of bottom feeding.
Condescending? Not at all. Bottom feeding in forums such as these ought to be condemned. In their cowardice and intellectual dishonesty, they demand answers they themselves are reluctant to proffer, then attack people for their selection in the banal Sophie’s choice set up in the first place.
You’ll see me engage fully in debate. You’ll never see me act like a bottom feeder because I hold a different point of view.

“You’ll see me engage fully in debate. You’ll never see me act like a bottom feeder because I hold a different point of view.”
Your humility is only exceeded by your braggadocio.

Thanks Robert. I take great pride in my humility. Your input on the topic?

First, let me commend Gerard for honestly grappling with the ethical question.
With regard to this ethical question:
1) One of the observations that is key, at least to me, is to see how instinct and emotion affect moral choices. Instinctively we react to the live infant, and hence the choice is made at that level. Zygotes in a liquid nitrogen cylinder create no instinctive reaction. There is no sensory stimulae that triggers an instinctive reaction and even if such stimulae were present, our evolutionary history has not conditioned us to react to those stimulae as we do to the sights and sounds of an infant.
2) Even when a stong belief in the egalitarian view of human life is held, it is insufficient to overcome the instinctive reaction for the majority of people most of the time. To support this point, a parent is most likely to give precedence to saving their own child ahead of another child.
3) Instinctive and emotional reaction are not always sufficient, and it is best when critical rational consideration is also brought to bear in ethical questions, (should one have the luxury of the time in a real world scenario.) Rational consideration can temper inappropriate instinctive and emotional responses.
One last observation: Answering ethical questions fairly and honestly is extremely difficult, and especially when consideration of them hits squarely into strongly held beliefs. To do so, is a sign of maturity and courage.

I wonder what Waldman thinks this ethical riddle (which has been argued numerous times during the debate over embryonic stem cell research) proves.
Let’s say I replaced the zygotes with 500 rapists. If I choose to save the infant, does that mean it should be legal to kill rapists?
Or maybe let’s replace the zygotes with 500 hospice patients. If I choose to save the infant, does it follow that it should be legal to kill hospice patients.
Of course not. The scenario doesn’t prove what proponents of killing the unborn need it to prove. Just because you might save one type of human being over 500 other human beings doesn’t prove it should be legal to kill the human beings you wouldn’t save.
Numerous prolifers (like Ramesh Ponnuru and Robert George) have destroyed this argument but for some reason pro-choicers constantly bring it up like it proves something. 5

Albert,
Hypothetical scenarios are perfect for isolating aspects of a person’s reaction to something. If I wanted to know someone’s gut reaction to something, then I would phrase the question to receive such a question. But I think the question was MEANT to ask, if you had to choose between saving an infant and 500 embryos, which would you save? Forget the fires, forget the crying of the infant — just pure numbers and pure “level of living” (if you look at it that way). Do you save 1 infant or 500 zygotes?
All this rambling around with the details defeats the purpose of the question, which is to get the person being asked to admit a truthful answer to the underlying question, is there a scale of personhood and/or life? I could just as easily ask that question and many people would say, “No of course not.” And yet, when posed with this question, they would choose the infant. All those other details are just that; the point was that when presented with a situation where they can rationally think out their response (and avoid that visceral emotional reflex) they weighed pros and cons and chose 1 being over 500 beings.
JivinJ,
I think this question simply points to the fact that when it comes down to it, an infant that is out of the womb and well is “more human” or “more alive” than a zygote, whether it’s in the womb or in nitrogen. If they had EQUAL VALUE, then you would obviously save 500, not 1. If I had to choose between 500 people being shot, or just 1, then I would choose the 1 — unless they’re was something particularly special about that 1 person. In that example, it might be because I have a strong emotional attachment to that 1 person, or they’re somehow particularly important (there can obviously be a myriad of detail injected here).
So why would anyone choose the 1 born being over the 500 unborn beings unless there was something that 1 infant had that 500 zygotes don’t?

Er, I apologize for my error. I meant to say, “…then I would phrase the question to receive such an answer.”

Wellsy,
You seem to be changing the rules after the game has been played. Now we don’t want to imagine fires, etc.
Again, the choice is a Sophie’s Choice. It forces a choice between sacred and sacred, which is an artificial choice. For pro-life individuals, the embryos are no less human.
Most have cradled a newborn. I don’t know of any who have rocked an embryo to sleep, do you? Yet that familiarity, biologically reinforced by gurgles, coos, still small breaths and baby smiles may cause one to reach for the baby, but it does not take away the fundamental human identity, status and dignity of the embryonic human.
Here the pro-choicers try to impeach the intrinsic identity and dignity of the embryonic human by appealing to issues of identification with extrinsic accidental characteristics of latter stage humans. Playing favorites among your children doesn’t make the least favored less a human, or less your child. It speaks to your limitations, not the least-favored child’s intrinsic identity and worth.
And so it goes with lifeboat scenarios. I’d rather sit with you or other pro-choicers over a couple of pints and a burger and just discuss where we are coming from in an intellectually honest, gimmick-free manner. That is the best forum, I’ve found. It fosters warmth instead of rancor. Then we blame the hangover on the conversation ;o)
God Bless.

“the fact of the baby in the crib is evidence that it was chosen by its mother and loved by someone”
It could just as easily be the baby of a woman who was denied (perhaps by court order, or by a threatening husband, etc.) the right to choose to terminate a (very) unwanted pregnancy.
‘chosen’ indeed!

Wellsy,
A seven inch journey down the birth canal doesn’t make one more human or more alive. It’s scientifically ridiculous to claim one living human organism is “more alive” or “more human” than another living human organism. Humanity and whether something is alive or not are not sliding scale properties like height or weight.
Would you save one infant or 10 convicted rapists? If you’d save the child does that somehow prove the rapists are less human or less alive? I think it’s fairly obvious that it proves no such thing.
Those in favor of killing human embryos can’t prove human embryos aren’t living human beings so they’re left with creating hypotheticals which try to argue whether the unborn are human based on what someone else would do. That’s silly. What I would do in the situation has no bearing on whether the unborn are living human organisms.

Thanks for a (mostly) serious and challenging discussion.
One of you asked what I was hoping to get at with this hypothetical.
I’ve argued that, in some ways, pro-choice voters are slightly out of synch with some pro-choice leaders. While they want the decision to be made by the woman, many do believe that after a certain point the fetus takes on some personhood rights — a position not typically espoused by pro-choice leaders.
I’ve also wondered to what extent there’s also a gap — more subtle perhaps, but real — between pro-life voters and pro-life leaders. What got me wondering about this is the fact that 37% of the population wants abortion illegal except in cases of rape and incest. That means about half of pro-life voters would make that exception. Yet if abortion is murder, allowing it because the life was created through another crime makes no sense. To me, that means pro-life voters are seeing — perhaps unconsciously — their own shades of gray.
So I was curious: what’s the nature of these gray areas? And do they point to areas of potential common ground? If a pro-life person would save the baby instead of hte 500 zygotes, it made me wonder whether they would agree to some public policies that would prevent some second or third trimester abortions at the risk of allowing some loss of zygotes. For instance, if Plan B occasionally leads to a fertilized embryo not implanting — but leads to fewer second or even later-first trimester abortions, is that something that some pro-life voters would be willing to accept?

“Most have cradled a newborn. I don’t know of any who have rocked an embryo to sleep, do you? Yet that familiarity, biologically reinforced by gurgles, coos, still small breaths and baby smiles may cause one to reach for the baby, but it does not take away the fundamental human identity, status and dignity of the embryonic human.”
Well, yes it sort of does. You have to fall back on ambiguous abstractions like “identity, status, and dignity” precisely because with embryos, you don’t have any direct moral features or capacities on which to hang your argument.
Those things people feel towards babies are based on empathy and the sense that it is, really is, a feeling, experiencing being. You don’t have any of that with an embryo. Whether or not it has dignity is completely subjective (i.e. IT clearly has no capacity for a sense of dignity: it’s simply you projecting your concept of dignity backwards on it). It doesn’t have any “identity” yet in a very literal sense (not even the barest framework for self-identity to exist).
But the reality is that a recipe, some cookware, and a vanishingly small amount of the necessary ingredients is not a cake. And an embryo is not a person in any sense of the word that gets at what’s morally important and significant ABOUT persons.

An acorn is not an oak. An egg, even a fertilized egg, is not a chicken.

anyone who claims that they would save the zygotes over a baby in a real live fire is probably lying. i mean, really. if my husband and i were in a fertility clinic with our daughter and could save either our daughter OR our embryos as the clinic burned down, there would be not one millisecond of hesitation. we’d save our daughter. and again, anyone who would claim to do differently is probably kidding themselves.
zygotes are cells. that’s it. cells.
as for pro-choicers believing that personhood rights exist at some point: they might in the abstract. but the second a pro-choicer, or even a pro-lifer, finds that his daughter or wife might die, or need a kidney transplant, or go blind, as a result from giving birth, they often realize that they are more pro-choice than they thought. or at least, pro choice for them and THEIR families, but not Other People’s. and i defy anyone to tell his or her 13 yr old daughter that she must bear the child of her rapist because the cells in her uterus are “deserving of personhood”. what a crock.
oh and btw, PLAN B IS NOT AN ABORTION. RU-486 IS THE ABORTION PILL.

oh and by the way, gerard–
the baby in the hospital might not have been there because it was “chosen” by its mother who “chose” not to abort it. in 85% of the counties in the US, there is no abortion provider. abortion is often prohibitively expensive for poor women, and have arbitrary 24 hour waiting periods which make it difficult, if not impossible, to obtain abortions within the first trimester, after which it can become illegal to do so in some states.

“An acorn is not an oak. An egg, even a fertilized egg, is not a chicken.” Yet, many feel that the world needs the acorn to become an oak, and that the egg is entitled to become a chicken without worry of being scrambled. Left to a situation where someone must die, there is no good choice. There is anquish of the soul either way. I think it is fair to argue that a woman’s right to choose extends up to the choice of engaging in sex. Certainly the man’s choices end there.

Dear Albert the Abstainer:
I am staunchly on the pro-life side, from fertilization onward. After revolving over this question I am strongly inclined to say I would choose to save the baby. However, I believe that your question, when looked at more closely, detracts not at all from the pro-life position.
Here’s why: If the situation where somehow set up that I could save either 1 baby or 500 elderly people or 500 healthy adults, I would again choose the baby. Despite the fact that I recognize the adults as persons with full human rights.
Again: I am poor and have just enough money to feed my child. Someone tells me that this same money can feed 500 children in Somalia, otherwise they will die today. But my child will die if I don’t use the money for him. Again, without a doubt I would choose my own child, although I recognize those children as fully human with full human rights.
And I believe my choice would be ethical in those cases. Because, given that you cannot save the world, your primary responsibility is to those persons closest to you and entrusted to your care.
In other words: when it comes to a question of whom to save from a death that is not your doing, there are other factors at stake besides the personhood of the victims.
This riddle does NOT zero in on the personhood of the potentially saved.
If I heard a baby crying to be saved, that would create a bond of personal responsibility, similar to that of a parent, which would override my responsibility to the zygotes.
This a question of whom to save from death, not whom to kill. It is never permissible to actively kill a judicially innocent person at any stage from fertilization onwards, whatever the result or in any circumstance.
By the way, if the question were: save 1 zygote or 500 Nazis, I would save the zygote

As for Marian: incorrect. A fertilized chicken ovum is a chicken. A chicken zygote or a chicken embryo is an individual of the chicken species. And a human zygote or human embryo is a member of the human species.
An ‘egg,’ meaning the whole thing with the hard shell, is not a chicken. Nor is the mother’s womb itself a person. But that is not the issue.
Imprecise thought kills.

Tricky situation. Well, for me,I go for the baby. It’s all about the thought that the baby is already alive. Specially if it’s your baby. There is already a connection between you and her which is established right after she is born.

oh.. and as for the zygotes, hmmm.. ah! nvm. lol.. the baby is still the most important.

If anyone should be saved, it should be the baby. The baby is the only one that is undeniably viable. The others still require in-utero incubation (that means they aren’t finished yet).