Sci-fi writer baffles abortion foes with simple question: Would you save 1,000 embryos or one child in fire?
David Edwards
17 Oct 2017 at 11:44 ET
Science fiction author Patrick S. Tomlinson this week explained how opponents of abortion rights can be shut down with one simple question about whether 1,000 embryos are more important than the life of a single child. width="300" height="150">
In a series of tweets on Monday, Tomlinson revealed the scenario that he says has repeatedly stumped so-called pro-life activists.
Tomlinson said that he asks abortion opponents whether it makes more sense to save one child from a burning building or a vial of 1,000 embryos.
“They will never answer honestly, because we all instinctively understand the right answer is “A.” A human child is worth more than a thousand embryos. Or ten thousand. Or a million. Because they are not the same, not morally, not ethically, not biologically,” he wrote. “This question absolutely evicerates their arguments, and their refusal to answer confirms that they know it to be true.”
“No one, anywhere, actually believes an embryo is equivalent to a child. That person does not exist. They are lying to you,” he added.
On Tuesday, Tomlinson said that he woke up to a “thousand” of new followers.
“Holy crap,” he wrote. “I literally wake up and there’s another thousand of you. Welcome new followers. I write books and yell at the alt-right on social media.”
Patrick S. Tomlinson
✔ @stealthygeek
Whenever abortion comes up, I have a question I've been asking for ten years now of the "Life begins at Conception" crowd. In ten years, no one has EVER answered it honestly. 1/
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Patrick S. Tomlinson
✔ @stealthygeek
It's a simple scenario with two outcomes. No one ever wants to pick one, because the correct answer destroys their argument. And there IS a correct answer, which is why the pro-life crowd hates the question. 2/
8:35 PM - Oct 16, 2017
Patrick S. Tomlinson
✔ @stealthygeek
Replying to @stealthygeek
Here it is. You're in a fertility clinic. Why isn't important. The fire alarm goes off. You run for the exit. As you run down this hallway, you hear a child screaming from behind a door. You throw open the door and find a five-year-old child crying for help. 3/
8:37 PM - Oct 16, 2017
Patrick S. Tomlinson
✔ @stealthygeek
Replying to @stealthygeek
They're in one corner of the room. In the other corner, you spot a frozen container labeled "1000 Viable Human Embryos." The smoke is rising. You start to choke. You know you can grab one or the other, but not both before you succumb to smoke inhalation and die, saving no one. 4/
8:39 PM - Oct 16, 2017
Patrick S. Tomlinson
✔ @stealthygeek
Replying to @stealthygeek
Do you A) save the child, or B) save the thousand embryos? There is no "C." "C" means you all die. In a decade of arguing with anti-abortion people about the definition of human life, I have never gotten a single straight A or B answer to this question. And I never will. 5/
8:42 PM - Oct 16, 2017
Patrick S. Tomlinson
✔ @stealthygeek
Replying to @stealthygeek
Do you A) save the child, or B) save the thousand embryos? There is no "C." "C" means you all die. In a decade of arguing with anti-abortion people about the definition of human life, I have never gotten a single straight A or B answer to this question. And I never will. 5/
Patrick S. Tomlinson
✔ @stealthygeek
They will never answer honestly, because we all instinctively understand the right answer is "A." A human child is worth more than a thousand embryos. Or ten thousand. Or a million. Because they are not the same, not morally, not ethically, not biologically. 6/
Patrick S. Tomlinson
✔ @stealthygeek
This question absolutely evicerates their arguments, and their refusal to answer confirms that they know it to be true. No one, anywhere, actually believes an embryo is equivalent to a child. That person does not exist. They are lying to you. 7/
Patrick S. Tomlinson
✔ @stealthygeek
They are lying to you to try and evoke an emotional response, a paternal response, using false-equivalency. No one believes life begins at conception. No one believes embryos are babies, or children. Those who cliam to are trying to manipulate you so they can control women. 8/
Patrick S. Tomlinson
✔ @stealthygeek
Replying to @stealthygeek
Don't let them. Use this question to call them out. Reveal them for what they are. Demand they answer your question, and when they don't, slap that big ol' Scarlet P of the Patriarchy on them. The end. 9/9
https://www.rawstory.com/2017/10/sci-fi-writer-baffles-abortion-foes-with-simple-question-would-you-save-1000-embryos-or-one-child-in-fire/
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I'll have to ask that question the next time a pro-lifer wants to claim abortion is wrong because an embryo is a child. But somehow, I doubt I'll get a straight answer. Probably a dodge or deflection of the question.
Emotional appeals or evocation of emotional responses are the only arguments pro-lifers have: "It's a baby/child. Abortion is murder. If you support abortion, you support murder/infanticide, why do you hate babies,? you'll burn in hell," ect.... Those are typical responses I see. And they become more apparent and vocal as pro-lifers arguments (I use the term loosely) are blown out of the water. It's almost comical really.
I’d grab the child and hurry our asses out of there. Do you know how many possible sperm and eggs you’d be saving?!
It's amusing to see this after Twitchy had a field day making fun of the author and his supposed "tough question" the other day. I almost posted this becuase of the roasting Tominlson got, but I knew what it would devolve to.
Obviously, Tomlinson is a simpleton who thinks the only "honest" answer is:
“Patrick, all of my life I have been in a kind of pro-life haze, a self-delusion. Your challenge has helped me see that I don’t really believe life begins at conception. You are right: I would save the child. But do you want to know someone else who has been saved? I have. Thanks for for issuing your challenge."
But here's my response: The kid can feel pain, frozen embryos can't. It's not difficult.
But of course, the premise of the quesiton and what supposedly proves is silly. As Chestrton said, that a maniac prefers a small scale logical consistency to the larger, more complex nature of the real world, " and that's all this thought experiment is.
Change the question. What if it's your kid (or loved one) and 50 members of a different race (let's say black) ? If you choose your kid, does that mean you think the lives of 50 black people aren't worth one white kid?
Of course that's not the only reason someone might choose to save their kid. As Jim Jammitis said, "di sallowing all but a tiny amount of data to prove an assertion is not the sign of a deep thinker or someone who is truly confident in his position. When your opponent declares explanation to be against the rules in an argument, you’re being used by someone who is masturbating their own ego rather than debating idea."
It’s a new derivative of the trolley problem .
The trolley problem was the vehicle for an excellent half hour of television last night on "the good place."
If you have the chance to save 50 people or just your own child or loved one the answer is obvious, save the 50 people regardless of skin color since that makes zero difference, they're humans who have parents and siblings and loved ones. To selfishly grab your own child and doom 50 other people is inhuman.
But the question you pose has nothing to do with the point of the original example which is, "Do even anti-abortion folk recognize a difference between a living, breathing child and an embryo even though they claim with screaming vitriol that they are the same when they are shaming and attacking pro-choice Americans?" and the answer to that is a resounding "Yes."
what if it's 2?
People have always placed relative value on life and act accordingly. Family over strangers, Innocent over guilty, young over old etc... No one I've ever met says all humans are the same and it's impossible to distinguish between situations. On a rescue boat with limited seats, pretty much everyone agrees it's women and children first.
If I could guarantee that 2 children would live even though it would doom my one child, I like to think I would save the two children. If it were one, then I would likely choose my one child over the one child of another parent but I would likely feel guilty for not being able to save them. But really this misses the point that embryos aren't children, now we're just down the hypothetical question of weighing one life against another with no question as to whether one is a life or not.
I thought the whole point of this exercise was to weigh one life against the other. The question asks to pick between lives, and I, and others, have without any difficulty.
The whole point of the exercise is to weigh the life of a child already born living, feeling and breathing against 50 embryos who aren't feeling, thinking or able to live on their own. It's to make that very point of difference, to point out to anti-abortionists that there is a difference and women who choose to get abortions aren't just "murdering babies" as many anti-abortionists like to claim.
But this hypothetical accomplishes none of those things, which is the point of my first post. The idea that is some sort of revolutionary mindfuck that pro-lifers can't deal with is just silly, and that has been demonstrated numerous times here and on twitter. There's nothing new or original in this hypothetical that any pro-life person hasn't already or can't think though in a moment.
In terrible, fake situations like this hypothetical, hard choices need to be made. That's always the situation where choices between human lives need to be made.
Pro-lifers think embryos have vale as human life but, like everyone else, will make a choice when only one life can be saved. I assume you wouldn’t rush past your own mother to save a stranger instead of her but that doesn’t remotely mean that the stranger’s life had no value or that you murdered the stranger by saving your mother.
But this is not the kind of choice involved in a “pro choice” abortion, where a woman’s life is not at risk and she is exterminating life simply as birth control because she believes that the fetus is a worthless collection of cells and of no more concern to her than the half eaten cheese sandwich that she threw in the trash. So pro lifers can still look at this as murdering babies even if, under certain circumstances, a pro lifer may make a choice on who to save when two lives are at risk. For that reason, the exercise is pointless.
It makes no difference whether you put more value on the child or equal value (child=embryo) because they are your personal beliefs. If you chose to save the child it doesn't mean you don't believe the embryo isn't alive or doesn't have a soul, it may be that on a scale of 1 to 100 the child is 100 and the embryo is 98. Your choice to save the child over the embryo doesn't excuse or rationalize abortion because in the end the abortionist is the one lighting the Fire.
Actually, there's a chance that the jar of frozen embryos would survive the fire, but from the fact situation, the smoke inhalation would certainly have killed the child. The smoke would not affect the jar of frozen embryos.
I would save the child.
A silly "thought experiment" that demonstrates nothing. Unless the pro-abortion crowd is willing to restrict abortion after the first few weeks. Most, though clearly not all, abortion foes want to restrict abortion after a reasonable gestation period.
There is no such thing as a "pro-abortion" crowd, just a pro-choice crowd, and abortion is already restricted after a reasonable gestation period. 92% of all abortions occur prior to 12 weeks when the zygote isn't much larger than a kidney bean and the law bans abortions at viability, a full 14 weeks before full term. The only exceptions are when it's to save the life of the mother. This seems pretty reasonable to reasonable people not infected with religious indoctrination that has convinced them that a tiny magical soul was created at conception.
that a tiny magical soul was created at conception
Hand crafted by Jesus himself ...
"Pro-abortion " is a disingenuous term. And what "reasonable " time frame do pro-lifers want to allow abortion? I've heard a wide range of answers, from not at all to only the first trimester, to viability.
The child......why would there be any other answer?
Always the child.....forever!
On the surface, that is the obvious answer, because like someone else pointed out--frozen embryo's feel no pain. When you switch it up and make it YOUR embryo's that you cannot reproduce again, then the question becomes a little more muddled. Of course I would choose the child first over the 1000 in both scenarios here simply because I could adopt. But that is because I'm not making a split second decision. I have time to reason all of the possible outcomes. Of course in doing so, the actual logical answer would be to save the 1000 lives over the 1. I wonder how that would sit with Tomilison...
this is one of the most ignorant questions I have ever read.
of course the child and how it relates to abortion is a long stretch.
with an abortion there is no burning building
Except the one that the anti-abortionist bomber creates.
I suggest you save everyone.
"Do you A) save the child, or B) save the thousand embryos? There is no "C." "C" means you all die."
So you chose "all die".
Nobody could know that absolutely going in so there would be some who would try to save them all.
If you had to pick between saving 1000 human embryos and an old blind dog, which one would you pick? What if it's a puppy? What about your car keys or your lunch? Just how worthless are human embryos to abortionists?
The dog/puppy, and my car keys. Embryos are embryos. There's no inherent "value" to them beyond personal attachment.
Then the embryos have no value to you at all. However, if a pro life person would save the embryos over a dog or a sandwich, then the embryos have value to them and the original question is pointless because all it shows is that people will help a feeling person in pain over embryos who feel none.
No, embryos dont have "value" to me. Why would they? My lunch or car keys do have "value." But I wouldn't be surprised if pro-lifers did opt to save the embryos over anything else. That just shows they do have some attachment.
The real point of the question was never to get a answer because he doesn't accept any answers he doesn't agree with. He calls them dishonest if he doesn't get the answer he wants. He gives you three choices save the child, save the embryo's, or die trying to save them all (he says there's no C but there's always a C), but He not only sees just one answer as correct He also thinks any other answer must be a lie..
Sorry - there is insufficient data to make a decision.
1. Do embryos have a soul?
2. If they do, and they are aborted - do they go to heaven or hell?
3. Does an infant have a soul?
4. If it does, and you kill it - does it go to heaven or hell?
To answer your questions :
1. No
2. Neither (although, some religions will point to Purgatory instead).
3. No
4. See answer number 2.
Considering no one has ever proven there is a soul and the concept is religious based imagination, it's safe to conclude there is no soul.
It doesn't mean there is a soul either. For all the religions (and/or their followers) that speak of a soul, it's odd that not one can actually prove there's a soul or where it is. They just say there's a soul and believe that is fact. It's a baseless claim and there's no reason to take it seriously. Unless people have some kind of emotional need to believe it.
Of course we can.
Are imaginary creatures real?
so, if a building was burning, would you save a child or a 90 year old person?
probably the child. placing value on one life over another doesn't mean the other life has no value.
doesn't mean embryo's are not life because you save the child.
True. If a man chooses to save his wife over his mother, or vice versa, it doesn't mean the one who was lost had no value.
No one is debating whether embryos are "life" or not. But they are little more than clumps of cells. Saving them is akin to saving a petri dish.
reads to me that is exactly what he is saying
they are both life
Again, whether it's life or not is not the issue or even relevant.
So are the millions of sperm that get discarded every day in pubescent boys tube socks around the world. Do you save the tube socks or save the child?
They are cells. That's about it.
Actually, it's more of a continuation of life. If you want to get technical.
Not really. It happens in nature on a regular basis.
They are cells. That's about it.
You must be a popular guy.
Hey Tina, how's the bunch of cells in your belly? Does the bunch of cells kick yet?
Comment removed for CoC violation [ph]
I don't know, nor do I really care.
What if Tina called it a "bunch of cells?"
I guess you buy into the anti-abortion propaganda nonsense, as that is not how abortions are performed. Neither does a fetus feel pain until after viability. But nice attempt at an appeal to emotion and ad hom attack.
Talk about a disingenuous argument in favor of abortion. First of all, you drop down to the ground if the smoke is increasing that fast. Then, you still try to save both. So, what if you die in the process. You do your best to save both and you stay low and use your head to come out alive. C is the correct answer, because there is always a way around to getting both A and B to survive.
There is no "C". If you want to impose a "C" then I can impose a "D", "E" and "F" and who knows how many more in order to muddy and make useless the whole exercise.
The exercise is useless as an argument and that is what it is an argument. The only thing supposedly stopping you from saving both the child and embryos is the smoke. Guess what, if you pay attention to your fire safety classes in school, you will find that the best thing you can do when it gets smoky is to drop and crawl.
Of course there's a C ! Some people would have to try to save them all against the odds.
That was not the quiz put to us. If you want to write up your own article adding a "C' or more choices, go ahead. Then we can consider it.
Given the scenario that was laid out there are a number of choices one might make including "D" some people will leave the kid and the embryo's and just save themselves. I understand that the author seeks to trap people will just two choices for propaganda purposes but that is dishonest because it doesn't account for free will. I though he was Pro-Choice ?
It's a hypothetical, not a real life situation calling for any possible solution. If I put a quiz to you and asked what does 2 + 2 equal, I would not expect you to come back and say I have to also consider what 2 + 3 equals.
LOL
It’s a bad hypothetical as it fails to take common sense into account, which is why it is a disingenuous argument.
Does my expmple take common sense into account? If I were to ask you which is bigger: A or A, do i need common sense or just plain being able to see the difference. I don't expect a "common sense" answer, such as "It depends on the font". If you were asked which do you prefer, apples or oranges, does common sense tell you that there aren't enough choices because you prefer bananas better than both of them?
You know what? I can't suffer ideocy any longer over this simple thing.
And we're here to discuss the article not to take an asinine quiz. Since the question asked was about what could be a real life situation (not 2+2) that if it were asked honestly it would allow for any possible answer but it wasn't and doesn't so why would I play his game by his rules when I know he stacked the deck.
You are trying to apply simple mathematics to an algebraic equation. This isn’t 2 + 2 = 4, this is a + b + c = d, or if you want it simplified it’s a graphical equation along the x, y, and z axes.
It's not a bad hypothetical at all. It's supposed to make you think, which apparently some are having a hard time with. It's a simple question really, is an embryo equal to a 5 year old child. If you believe it is then you have to say you'll save the 1000 embryos, but if you recognize, like most people do, that a living, breathing child is worth more than a thoughtless mass of cells that merely have the potential to become a child, then you have to save the 5 year old. The fact is billions of "live" sperm are discarded daily, each with the "potential" to become a child. Would you save a billion sperm and let the 5 year old die? Of course not. So you have to accept that there are different values placed on life at different stages. That's all the exercise is pointing out.
Once you've been around here for a while, as I have, you will find out that I'm a classic movie buff, and although I enjoy science fiction, when it comes to this present topic I'm done and to quote Rhett Butler, frankly, I don't give a damn.
You should spend more tie reading some of the things I seed-- they are much more interesting!
(Occasionally I'll do some controversial thing-- but that's just pandering. Mostly I'm getting bored with bashing Trump and or defending him).
I thought I did.
Let's suppose you go to a Casino and sit at a black-jacki table. How do you intend to not play the game that's presented?
he should stick to Sci-Fi
I'd save the child who was screaming the loudest if I could. Embryos can't scream out in pain.
This is kind of like Liberals talking about gays. They don't want to hear anything about poo poo on your pp. That's nasty and vulgar and is racists and all sorts of bad things to tell it like it is.
Make the question more interesting by having the choice be between one child or 1000 embryos with a fifty dollar bill tied around each jar containing one.
Nah, I'd still save the child. Now, make it a hundred dollar bill instead....
How does one know what they would do, until they do it. They DON'T !
It's a Stupid try at "Gotchya" !.
Ask an honest question and you'll get an honest answer. The author asked a dishonest question and then whines that people are not being honest when he doesn't get the answer he wanted.
Exactly.