To The Guy Who Thinks He Has the Ultimate Abortion Argument…Nope

Did you all see this guy’s Twitter saga?

He says he has the ultimate question to shut down those opposed to abortion. And then a million (I exaggerate) other people shared it, tweeted it, tried to argue it. It looked like he had an undeniable point. Until I actually read what he said. In my opinion (sometimes-humble-sometimes-not), he makes no sense at all.

His “question-that-no-one-can-even-begin-to-answer” is:

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

Here’s the problem…

This isn’t what abortion is like. You don’t have to choose between a five-year old and an embryo. You ONLY have to choose between an embryo or no embryo. Choosing no embryo doesn’t save the life of an older child somewhere. Choosing to keep your child doesn’t jeopardise the lives of embryos.

Using this illustration, a more accurate depiction would be:

You see a burning building. Armed with your only viable embryo, you run into the burning, throw the petri dish into the flames, and leave. That’s it. How is the five-year old involved in your decision to abort a foetus?

Am I the only one who sees this? Am I the only voice of logic here?? Are those crickets I hear?

This isn’t about what I think about abortion – it’s about the question holding no water. It seems readers were so quick to jump on the bandwagon to voice their own pro- or anti-abortion arguments that no-one actually thought about the scenario. And, when we don’t think, we follow. And, when we follow, we become nameless, faceless robots that give into the standards and ethics of others. That’s a dangerous place to be.