New Stanek poll question: Which one of these would you save?
I have a new poll question up. It’s one of those abstract questions I’ve been asked, but it does test theory against reality:
If in one hand I was holding an embryo in a petri dish, and in the other a newborn, and could only save one, I would…
Vote in the poll on the right lower side of the home page.
The previous poll question was in response to threats (idle, as it turns out, unsurprisingly) by abortion zealots in the wake of the Supreme Court’s 9-0 decision to overturn Massachusetts’ buffer zone law.
And pro-lifers by-and-large said, “Bring it on”…
As always, make comments to either the previous or current poll here, not on the poll site.
Jul.06, 2014 7:09 pm |
Polls |
Jill Stanek is a nurse turned speaker, columnist and blogger, a national figure in the effort to protect both preborn and postborn innocent human life.
The newborn because he or she would be frightened. I wouldnt value the other baby less. I would just pick the lesser of the 2 evils.
Like a fireman in a burning house. He or she may not be able to save everyone but you save who you can.
Newborn would suffer more, so I would save the born baby. Does not make the embryo less human, just less likely to suffer. It’s like saving a ten year old versus an adult, you would probably save the kid, but it does not mean you think the adult is valueless or worth less.
I would have to save the human that I would have the ability to keep alive.
God has given women the tremendous gift and responsibility to nurture preborn humans inside our wombs. We should be doing everything possible to keep violence from entering that sacred space and harming little ones that need to be protected.
Human embryos don’t belong in petri dishes.
The newborn of course.
Who was it who claimed they could save both, no matter what the situation, the last time this question came up?
Obviously everyone is going to save the newborn. Typically this question is asked along the lines of, “If you have to choose between saving a newborn or five viable embryos in a petri dish, which would you do?” Or, if you prefer to use pro-life language, “If you have to choose between saving one precious baby or five precious babies, which would you do?”
I would save the newborn.
Seriously? In what universe does this theoretical question test any realistic situation?
This isn’t the question of someone earnestly seeking to understand the pro-life position and it’s ramifications. The reality being bolstered here is the opportunity to cry “hypocrite” or get people to back down on their insistence that life begins at conception.
I consider a question like this a false dichotomy.
I would gladly give up my life in place of one of the others. Try to save both is the only answer. You can’t choose between children.
If you give up your life you won’t save either.
Giving up your life for an unknown quantity in a petri dish?
I would save the baby, partly because the baby just has more of an emotional pull, and partly because the embryo is already in a high-risk situation what would not be rectified by me rescuing it while it’s still in-vitro. It’s triage, just like you’d rescue the uninjured person rather than the person with a serious head injury.
The newborn.
It’s an emotional reaction based on what is more familiar, but that doesn’t mean it’s necessarily the correct choice. We know both have equal intrinsic value.
I’ve always thought this is one of the reasons why so many can actually justify their support of abortion. We can’t make the same level of emotional attachment to a child in the womb that we can with a newborn who we can see, touch, etc.
Without that emotional attachment to the “unseen” child in the womb I think it becomes easier for someone to justify something as barbaric as abortion.
It’s a false dilemma meant to dehumanize the embryo. Example: If we could only save one person from a burning building between a 99 year old dying of cancer or a newborn, if we save the newborn, it doesn’t mean the 99 year old is not human or valuable.
Why can you not hold both? Is one in danger? I’ve got a plan, hand the newborn to someone capable of babysitting and I’ll take the embryo to a doctor for a (hopefully successful) implantation in the uterus of one of the thousands of potential Mom’s that want the job. She might also be up for adopting the newborn too.
You always save the one most likely to survive (i.e. triage)–not because one is more valuable than another. Rescue personnel make these decisions all the time so this is not hypothetical–the stages in life may be different but they are both human and complete for the stage each of them are in. The attempt to frame this situation as a “trap” for pro-lifers is a bogus one.
As with the classic question concerning saving a mother or her child:
We save both.
The broad form of this sort of question is: Considering two people, which human life is worth more?
As a pro-lifer, I answer that we save the ones that we can. All life is valuable.
My personal opinion is that the persons who put the embryo in the petri dish have committed a crime against humanity and should be in jail.
I get this all the time. But if a building was burning and on one end was my nine year old daughter and on the other end an 80 year old man that I did not know. I would save my daughter first. Does that mean his life is not meaningful. No, but I have a relationship with my daughter and I could only choose one.
Ha, Susie, your comment reminds me of when I asked a pro-choicer if they would save me or a family member, and since they would obviously save the family member does that make me less human or valuable on the grand scale. I was trying to get across the ridiculousness of this question about embryos versus born humans but I do not think it worked the way I intended.
It’s a terrible question, yet it reveals the ethical problem with in-vitro fertilization, and why it is wrong. Embryos belong in the womb, never a petri dish.
But why set up a question that asks us to prefer one human life over another? Both children deserve to live, period.
They’re both in my hands? Then I can save both, and I’m not going to bother with silly questions like that. I’ll tuck the Petri dish into the newborn’s blanket. :)
Why not make the question more realistic?:
You have an abortionist with the cannula of a suction machine in one hand, ready to suck the embryo from a mother’s womb, and in the other hand, a newborn baby’s head, ready to twist it off. If you could disable only one hand, which would it be?
This poll makes no sense. Both are babies!
The point of the question is that a choice must be made. It doesn’t ask for various convoluted scenarios to be engineered, just ‘which would you choose’. The fact that some people refuse to do so and create all sorts of fantasy situations indicates that the concept of choice is simply anathemic to them. If you had two favorite flavors of ice-cream you’d probably never eat any! And judging by the rejection of the question itself by a few it would also appear that the pre-born are so paramount for them that their judgement gets clouded.
Vicki, is there a triage scenario you can envision where a paramedic would have to assess whether to treat a newborn or an embryo?
I can’t come up with anything. Hence my comment. If there’s an embryo in a petri dish, you’re likely in a medical lab where there are thousands of others… and newborns aren’t likely to be about.
Reality, why does a choice have to be made? This whole page is populated by people with a passion to tell mother’s of newborns that they DON’T have to choose between their darling little one and the little one that they’ve just realized is on the way.
You must choose: keep your left leg or your right. No context. If you insist on context then it’s obviously because you don’t accept that life means making choices. You must make a choice.
Silly.
“If there’s an embryo in a petri dish, you’re likely in a medical lab where there are thousands of others… and newborns aren’t likely to be about” – see, avoidance. You are not forced to deal with the question Laurie. If you feel unable to do so then don’t. But there’s no point devising alternatives. It is simply about what choice you would make.
“they DON’T have to choose between their darling little one and the little one that they’ve just realized is on the way” – ?????????????????? They choose whether to keep the one on the way or not. That’s the choice.
Both my legs are fully formed, the same age and fully functional.
“If you insist on context then it’s obviously because you don’t accept that life means making choices” – exactly.
Let’s have some fun with this:
Let us suppose that the newborn is a little boy named “Reality,” and the embryo is a little girl named “Jill.”
And for some unspeakable reason, we must choose.
Reality believes that some lives are worth more than others, that choices must be made, and that killing is a suitable solution to a variety of personal problems. So Reality would not be terribly hurt or surprised that we chose to kill him. Although he might personally prefer that we kill Jill instead, that’s not his choice to make. He is complacent with the result that some competent authority has decided that his life is not worth living.
On the other hand, little embryo Jill is opposed to killing. Jill believes that we all have a duty to each other to make sacrifices in order to spare innocent lives. Jill does not consent to being killed, but she also protests the killing of Reality just as much as the loss of her own life. Jill loves Reality.
And yet, for some unspeakable reason — we still must choose to save one and to sacrifice the other.
It is obvious to me that we must choose the pro-choicer for death, and designate the pro-lifer for life. This is the choice that does justice to each of their own value systems.
I think this is how it will be when we face God for our own personal judgments. God must choose. His choice will be based on the choices that we made for ourselves. We will be measured by the rule that we used to measure others.
I’ll opine that you have an odd sense of humor rather than anything else right now Del.
“Reality believes that some lives are worth more than others” – to the extent that an actual born person is ‘worth’ more than a developing fetus. That’s it.
“that choices must be made” – which they must. You make choices too.
“and that killing is a suitable solution to a variety of personal problems” – see now, there’s your problem. You go off on these little imaginery journeys. So now your little premise is shredded before we even start! But let’s try to have some fun anyway, wouldn’t want to disappoint you.
“So Reality would not be terribly hurt or surprised that we chose to kill him” – well if I was an actual newborn your proposition is moot. And there’s the fact that you wouldn’t be actively ‘choosing’ to kill me. But for the purpose of the ‘exercise’ I may well be – given that 84% of folks here would save the newborn. How about you?
“Although he might personally prefer that we kill Jill instead” – again, a moot proposition. And given the vote, most others here feel the same way.
“that’s not his choice to make” – no, it’s not the newborn or the embryo being asked the question.
“He is complacent with the result that some competent authority has decided that his life is not worth living” – so what do you have to say to the rest of the 84%?
“On the other hand, little embryo Jill is opposed to killing” – how do you know that? The question isn’t about killing anyway. You have drifted!
“Jill believes that we all have a duty to each other to make sacrifices in order to spare innocent lives.” – well that’s great but are you simply unable to answer the question? This is exactly what I was referring to a bit earlier.
“Jill does not consent to being killed” – moot proposition.
“but she also protests the killing of Reality just as much as the loss of her own life” – moot proposition.
“Jill loves Reality” – figured out how this goes yet?
“And yet, for some unspeakable reason — we still must choose to save one and to sacrifice the other” – it’s a question. Why the struggle?
“It is obvious to me that we must choose the pro-choicer for death, and designate the pro-lifer for life. This is the choice that does justice to each of their own value systems” – see, you do consider one life of greater worth than another! I knew you had it in you.
“I think this is how it will be when we face God for our own personal judgments” – moot proposition.
“God must choose. His choice will be based on the choices that we made for ourselves. We will be measured by the rule that we used to measure others.” – those infinitely variable things?
Well that was a little bit of fun :-)
tl;dr
“Both my legs are fully formed, the same age and fully functional.”
So? An embryo is a fully formed embryo and fully functions as such. A newborn is a fully formed newborn and fully functions as such. Why are you insisting on context anyway for the simple ‘which would you choose’? I didn’t ask you to come up with some convoluted scenario where perhaps one of your legs was malformed or stopped developing.
Which one of your legs do you pick? You have no choice but to make a choice… at least that was the gist that I took from your explanation of this exercise.
Aw diddums, did your fun fail? Shall I assume that your attention span is limited to 300 words or less? How do you read some of the articles posted here then? Or was it just too complex? LOL
“So?” – so?
I’m not the one insisting on context, others have been creating imaginery contexts so as to not select one of the two choices.
“I didn’t ask you to come up with some convoluted scenario where perhaps one of your legs was malformed or stopped developing” – and I didn’t, I mentioned that that was what others were doing in an effort to avoid answering the question. I answered it.
The exercise asked us to choose between an embryo and a newborn, not two embryos or two newborns.
In the words of Ronald Reagan……(the first remark)
http://youtu.be/RRUbwnkEPqc
In the words of Ronald Reagan……(the first remark)
http://youtu.be/RRUbwnkEPqc
Reality, you’re missing my point… and not answering my question.
What is your actual point and what is your specific question then?
I read the whole thread and I have no idea what the argument is about. All other things equal I would save the newborn first. If the embryo was my child (though no child of mine would ever be in a petri dish) maybe that would change my calculus. I’d save my family over strangers. Is this supposed to be a gotcha?
People are going to pick the baby. Same as the difference between a miscarriage and having a born child die. Miscarriages are usually not “happy” times, but for almost all of us it would be a far cry from losing one of our born kids.
Jill, you need to take this question down. It is unfair and wrong to choose one over the other. Obviously the embryo belongs in the womb only – never in a petri dish, where it can be exposed to manipulation and death. We need to save them both -by outlawing IVF and assisted reproductive technology and by outlawing abortion & abortifacients. That is the only real answer. As Father Frank Pavone says, “We need to save them both.”
[…] Stanek is running a poll on her blog (http://www.jillstanek.com/2014/07/stanek-poll-question-save) where she asks the question, “If in one hand I was holding an embryo in a petri dish, and in […]
I did a blog post about this today talking about my interview with Trent Horn of Catholic Answers where we discussed this issue of “choosing.”
I told Trent about a Facebook post my daughter received with a graphic showing two adult hands, and in one hand was a 12 week old fetus, and in the other hand was a newborn.
The text on the graphic said, “Which would you choose? Exactly!”
I asked Trent how he would respond to this.
He said,
“What I would say is the question, “Which would you choose?” is incomplete. I don’t know what you’re asking. It would be like if I asked you “Where is it?” You would say, “Where is what?” I can’t answer that question.
In the same way “Which would you choose?” I would say, “Which would you choose, what?” Choose to kill? Well certainly wouldn’t the answer be neither? Which would you choose to value? Well why not both?
And then I might ask the question, “Does size make us valuable?” Is a newborn baby more valuable than a fetus and worthy to live because they’re bigger? Well by that logic if we compared two pictures of a five year old and a newborn and said “Which would you choose? Exactly!” we would have the same kind of argument.
I would say that I’m not going to choose either because they’re both valuable even though one is older and more developed. So likewise can’t we say that the 12 week old fetus and the newborn are equally valuable even though one is just younger than the other? Why not do that?”
Here’s my post:
http://proliferesponse.org/which-would-you-choose/
Well said Zeke, albeit a little too close to reality for some here. It’s not a trick question and most people who actually found themselves in such a situation would respond as you say (83% here). Yet some deny the question, others dodge it and some create fantastic scenarios to avoid it.
I just consider it a useless question, just like I considered asking someone if they would save a family member or me, lol. It says nothing about the general value of the people in question.
I gotta call BS on quite a few of these answers. People are going to pick the baby, not the embryo in the petri dish.
Period.
People are not being truthful here. “Neither.” Oh please….
The first answer is the only real one.
Heh – everybody is going to pick the baby, and they’d carry that baby out if they had to walk over a thousand embryos in Petri dishes….
Anything else is indeed BS.