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Do you value embryos/fetuses equally to living people?
Take this hypothetical; you're in a fertility clinic and the fire alarm goes off. Everyone evacuates but you and a child you hear in another room. You go in and see a tray of 1000 viable human embryos on the table. It's a large tray and requires you to use both your hands and concentration to carry it; meaning you can only save one before fire engulfs the room, destroying the other. Do you save the child or the tray of 1000 potential lives?
When you look at the process of all life throughout earth you'll realize the world has more examples of life cut short than life long lived, whether it be from failures during development, or accidents, or disease, or predation, or squeezed out by competition. The fetus has potential, just like a sprouted seed. But you can't count your crop before it reaches harvest. And if you have too many seeds sprouting you can get a better crop if you cull the excess. People who try to elevate the fetus as equal to or more important than grown humans are basically arguing to let the human farm grow wild.
No, eugenics is picking a small subset of what you want to live and deliberately killing everything else. Life is everything gets a start and if some don't make it that's just life. Going far out of your way to make life which would have lost somehow survive and carry on indefinitely is the unnatural path, not the natural one.
No, eugenics is picking a small subset of what you want to live and deliberately killing everything else.
This is definitely not eugenics. It can be, but that's a rather barbaric way to go about it. Preventing conception would be just as effective if we were trying to eliminate, or at least reduce, genetic health issues(not saying we should sterilize diabetics or anything, just showing that there are other methods). The US educational system can even be seen as a form of social eugenics. Intelligence is shown to be at least some part genetic; and there are numerous studies directly linking higher educational attainment to lower unemployment rates, as well as higher median incomes. One could argue that the process of "weeding out" the less intelligent by failing them, effectively disrupting their chances of attaining a higher degree of education, sets them up for a higher chance of economic failure; more towards actual eugenics, there are also studies indicating that on average, women of higher educational attainment have more children than those with lower(most likely due to financial stability and social Darwinism), meaning the US educational system inadvertently causes less intelligent people to reproduce less, slightly raising overall intelligence levels. At least in theory.
I am against government control of human breeding for the purpose of developing desired human traits. However, there are circumstances wherein I could see court ordered sterilization is justified, such as the drug whore who drops children once a year only to have child services put the baby into the system upon its birth.
So you believe knowing the limits of what we can sustain and what will help us advance as a society is more important than doing everything we can to support every possible life? Not trying to generalize or assume your position, I'd just like a little clarification.
No. I'm not trying to run this like an insurance company calculating risks and possibilities. I'm saying making an edict that any an all human life must survive with no exceptions is naive and in fact unnatural relative to how all the rest of nature works.
I understand your point a little clearer, but can't one also argue that humanity is no longer relevant to how the "rest of the natural world" works? Every species prior to us have merely survived and lived based off their instincts; humans are self-aware and capable of logical reasoning. What's your opinion on the idea that calculating risks and possibilities could be how humans will eventually replace their instinctive impulses in terms of advancing our species?
In other words: If humanity could reach a point where we no longer have "parents" like we do now; but instead we genetically analyze and pair sperm and eggs synthetically to produce the lowest chances of birth defects and highest chances of positive genetic traits, knowing this goes completely against the "natural world", would that necessarily be a bad thing? If we dropped instinct altogether and became the healthiest population on the planet because of it, would it be worth it? I know this is quite a stretch of a hypothetical, just wondering your stance on this based on your perspective of humanity in the natural world.
A living person has friends, family, knowledge, responsibilities, memories, and, likely, many who love s/he. No contest.
I sacrificed an embryo for the life of my wife, the mother of to girls in grammar school that needed her. I KNOW I did the right thing. I am pro-life, especially for those who already HAVE one. Choices sometimes have to be made! We need the right to MAKE those choices!
So you believe the traits you mention add value to anything biologically human? And that over the course of the human life cycle, these traits continue to add to the "value" of a human being? Do you believe there are certain "classes" of human that should be valued over each other? For instance, valuing an embryo over your wife (which I don't criticize or necessarily disagree with).
The people who would save the tray over the child need to be “purged”. I used to ponder a good test for thinning the overpopulation- THIS IS IT!!! This is THE TEST!!!!
This is a great evaluation of good thought process - the DNA we need to preserve.
>>>if think a one cell organism is more precious than a living breathing (pain feeling) being - you clearly can’t help advance civilization.
So you believe the ability to feel pain and breathe make what is technically human(embryo) different enough than a birthed human to value them differently? Are there any other distinctions you believe separate the two?
But which would you choose to save? And why, if you can answer. Many instinctively answer and don't really ponder the other position. I didn't create this to argue abortion, so don't turn it into that, please. I'd rather stick to the hypothetical.
As to which I would save, that's a difficult question because the tray contains many lives. But, I would have to save the baby because although we're losing 1,000 lives, I and many other conservatives value the baby's life over the embryo's.
What's your main basis for valuing the baby higher than the embryo? Does it have to do with time since conception(i.e. stages of human life cycle), the ability for the baby to communicate its distress, the ability of other humans to empathize with that communication, the fact that the child is self-aware and able to understand danger, or something else entirely? I honestly struggled to decide which I would save for some time; when I thought I knew the "right" answer, I found another reason to think otherwise, and so on.
I value them the same if we were talking about lives. Not human lives.
I don't understand the last sentence you typed, partly because you can't seem to type out an argument without pasta sauce hitting your keyboard and partly because you didn't say much of anything.
Of course moral intuition says to save the child (if nothing else for the prevention of suffering) but it doesn't prove the case for pro-choice by any stretch.
Firstly, a moral intuition doesn't necessarily comply with moral logic. In a counter scenario, say you had to choose between saving your own child or 100 screaming adults. Obviously the moral, knee-jerk response is to save your own child but that doesn't make it necessarily right. As another example, Spider-Man's typical choice is to save Mary Jane over the bus full of children--but that doesn't make it morally correct.
Secondly, picking the child doesn't actually reveal the true value of embryonic life. It doesn't make it meaningless. The scenario described is a false dilemma--just because A is chosen over B, B is somehow made completely worthless.
Thirdly, most pro-life advocates already acknowledge that an already-born life is worth more than a potential one. If it comes down to saving the life of an unborn child or its mother, for instance, the mother is nearly always the one saved.
Lastly, this hypothetical scenario is a false comparison when it comes to abortions. In a real-life situation, there's no life being saved by an abortion, no already-born child that the fetus is being sacrificed for.
While everyone who answers would save the child, for every reason listed above the choice to save the child doesn't prove the case for abortion. (And that's why I'm putting my answer on this side, since I think that's what the question is getting at)
I said nothing about pro-choice nor did I specify anywhere that my hypothetical is intended to "prove the case for pro-choice".
Boy, do you like to assume.
say you had to choose between saving your own child or 100 screaming adults
I don't see how you could end up in a situation where these two choices are given. If you can save 100 "screaming adults", why can't you also save your son? It also depends on the circumstances, but ethically speaking one should choose the 100 adults; as I likely would.
Spider man-
Spider man is a fictional character; your attempt to use his characteristics as basis for your argument is laughable.
picking the child doesn't actually reveal the true value of embryonic life. It doesn't make it meaningless
No, it doesn't make it meaningless; it just shows which is valued over another. You really do love assumption.
The scenario described is a false dilemma--just because A is chosen over B, B is somehow made completely worthless
You assume so much.
this hypothetical scenario is a false comparison when it comes to abortions
Maybe because my hypothetical has nothing to do with abortion, you assumptive twit.
If you want me to argue my case for abortion, it would be much more compelling, full of factual data, and concrete than a hypothetical.
You'll have to excuse my assumption on the abortion issue because A: without it there's not much point to the conversation, (at best it's uninteresting) and B: The hypothetical you provided has never (in all the times I've seen it) been provided outside the context of the abortion debate.
I don't see how you could end up in a situation where these two choices are given
?????????? You do realize your entire question is based on an unrealistic, binary hypothetical, right? The point of which is to demonstrate a larger moral point?
ethically speaking one should choose the 100 adults; as I likely would
And that's a perfectly valid feeling to have, my point however was that most people (parents especially) would tend to answer they'd save their own child--which is also a perfectly justifiable moral answer. The fact that the moral answer and the ethical answer are not necessarily the same, however, demonstrates that a decision to save the child doesn't make the decision to save the embryos worthless.
The Spider-Man example
An unrealistic hypothetical scenario constructed simply to prove a moral point? Sound familiar?
You really do love assumption.
I was applying a context of abortion for this question, for reasons explained above. Without it, I do agree that "it just shows which is valued over another". Same goes for my "A and B" line of reasoning.
Maybe because my hypothetical has nothing to do with abortion, you assumptive twit.
My application of the hypothetical to abortion wasn't a personal attack on you. Your hypothetical has, however, been used in every single case I've seen it in before to support a pro-choice argument. So I was simply getting ahead of that argument.
I can see how you could assume the debate was centered around abortion. I was researching ethics on similar subjects and stumbled across an excerpt of this hypothetical.
?????????? You do realize your entire question is based on an unrealistic, binary hypothetical, right? The point of which is to demonstrate a larger moral point?
There's a difference between realistic an unrealistic hypotheticals. Yours seemed unrealistic as I can't really imagine a circumstance that could actually happen involving the choices you gave. Mine merely involves you being somewhere when a fire starts.
An unrealistic hypothetical scenario constructed simply to prove a moral point? Sound familiar?
But you imply that Spider-Man represents some standard of ethics and morality and that his actions portray what is morally and ethically just. If I give you any other fictional character that would save the bus of 100 instead of Mary Jane, your hypothetical crumbles? You're basing it off of a fictional character; it would make sense if you could somehow apply something he does to a universal argument, but you only say "Spider man saved one person, so everyone would".
My application of the hypothetical to abortion wasn't a personal attack on you. Your hypothetical has, however, been used in every single case I've seen it in before to support a pro-choice argument. So I was simply getting ahead of that argument.
My application of this hypothetical was to see differing views on what we perceive to be "human" or a "person". Not necessarily for an abortion debate(because honestly, I don't see abortion being made illegal because someone can rant their feelings online). I'm just getting peoples' ideas on different philosophical topics. Probably uninteresting to some, seeing as it's a little less heated than a full-on abortion debate.
What I meant is a case where you would have to kill the fetus in order to save the life of the mother, assuming that if the baby was born the mother would die in childbirth due to complications.
I would tell her what I said. Then I would apologize. She can file a lawsuit against me. And what about the mother(s) of the embryos? If I let their future children burn, what would I tell them?
Would you honestly understand and be content if it was your child, and someone chose to save a tray of embryos rather than your child?
And what about the mother(s) of the embryos? If I let their future children burn, what would I tell them?
That a child was screaming in terror and you felt you should save him/her? I'm simply trying to determine if your answer is merely a sort of "preemptive counter" to what you may assume is an argument for abortion. I'm not here to argue abortion; just your reasoning for your position strictly on the hypothetical; not what it implies.
I still think 1,000 lives are more valuable than one. Sure if it was my child I wold be very upset. But I think I could live with the knowledge that that person chose to save 1,000 lives rather than one. And no, I’m not trying to make this about abortion.
