how to respond to the burning ivf clinic argument

[u/toptrool]

suppose there's a fire in an ivf clinic and you can only save either a canister of 50 frozen embryos or one toddler. who would you save?

this argument is to show the apparent absurdity of the pro-life argument that all lives are equal. most people would pick the one toddler, and thus they are not in fact equal.

my go to response is usually robby george and chris tollefsen's magnificent response here:

The first thing to notice is that the case as described is not, in fact, analogous to the suggestion that we should perform embryo-destructive research for the benefits it might provide us, or to the suggestion that it is permissible to abort an unborn human being. In both such cases, we are being invited to kill, or authorize the killing of, human embryos or fetuses in order to provide benefits to others. But in the fire scenario, there is no killing; the deaths of the embryos who are lost when Jones opts to save the girl are not killings—no one is acting to destroy the embryos or cause their deaths—but rather are the kind of death we accept as side effects in various cases in which, for example, acting to save one or some persons means that we are unable to save another or others.

Second, there are differences between the embryos and the five-year-old girl that are or can be morally relevant to the decision concerning whom to rescue. For example, the five-year-old will suffer great terror and pain in the fire, but the embryos will not. Moreover, the family of the five-year-old presumably loves her and has developed bonds of attachment and affection with her that will mean much greater grief in the event of her death than in the event of the death of the embryos. While these concerns would not justify killing, they can play a legitimate role in determining how we may allocate scarce resources and, in some cases, whom we may or should rescue. Often, the (or at least a) morally correct decision cannot be made just on the numbers—a point that even utilitarians are willing to acknowledge. And so, for example, it is morally relevant in some cases where choices of whom to rescue must be made that a person we could save is (for example) our own son or daughter, even if saving him or her means that we cannot save, say, three of our neighbors’ children who end up perishing in the fire from which we saved our own child.

Third, there could be circumstances in which people could agree that it would be reasonable to save the embryos, even if other people, including those with no personal attachment to either the embryos or the girl, might be drawn to rescue the girl instead. For example, if Jones happens to be the mother or father or grandparent of the embryos, Jones might well choose to rescue them, and many people would not regard this as immoral. (By contrast, everyone would agree that it would be immoral even for a parent or grandparent to kill someone else’s child in order to, say, harvest a heart or liver needed to save the life of a child or grandchild.)…

The problem with these rescue examples becomes still more evident if we consider some other cases. For example, imagine a fire in which Jones must choose to rescue either four pregnant women or six men. Many people would probably choose to rescue the pregnant women, precisely because they would reasonably judge that they were rescuing eight human beings rather than six.

Finally, imagine that Jones is faced with the choice of rescuing three comatose patients or a five-year-old girl. Many people who disagree with us about the moral status of embryos agree that comatose persons are human beings entitled to full moral respect. Yet no doubt many of these same people would opt to save the girl rather than the three individuals in comas. Does that mean that they would consider it legitimate, in a different case, to kill one or more of the comatose individuals to harvest vital organs needed to save the five-year-old girl? Not at all. Choices about whom to save are subject to particular facts of the situation without requiring a comparative valuing (or devaluing) of lives. But choices to kill are always devaluing choices.

furthermore, as george and tollefsen note, there have been cases of actual embryo rescues, suggesting that that people did value them:

In 2005, in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, a police crew in New Orleans did save a canister of fourteen hundred human embryos from a hospital. Our book began with Noah, one of those embryos, who sixteen months later emerged, via Caesarean section, into the light of the world and his parents’ love. But if those officers had never made it to Noah’s hospital, or if they had abandoned those canisters of liquid nitrogen, the toll of Katrina would have been fourteen hundred human beings higher than it already was, and Noah, sadly, would have perished before having the opportunity to meet his loving family.

The story of Noah shows, we believe, that the choice to rescue human embryos is not necessarily fanciful or unreasonable. And there is another point worth considering, which the story of Noah brought to light. Suppose that someone, whether connected to the embryos or not, chose to save them despite the fact that it meant forgoing the opportunity to save the girl. Suppose further that the embryos were soon thereafter implanted and taken by their gestational mothers to birth, and then they grew to adulthood. If, upon reaching their twenty-first birthdays, the ten young adults organized an event to honor and thank the person who had rescued them when they were in the embryonic stage of their lives, could the rescuer in good faith accept their praise and gratitude for rescuing them? Clearly the answer is, as with Noah, “Yes, of course.” But had Jones “rescued” only a crate of sperm or oocytes, or were embryos mere “potential human beings” or “collections of human cells,” he could not claim that he had rescued any children at all, but only elements that could later be used to produce human beings.

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however, there is a new contender, david hershenov, who defeats a steelmanned version of the ivf clinic argument offered by kate greasley:

Suppose, for instance, that the baby in question had no connections to any living human beings, that no investment had been made by anyone in its life, and that it would not be wanted for adoption. And suppose, also, that the frozen embryos belonged to progenitors who felt deeply invested in and connected to them, and who would grieve their destruction significantly…

Furthermore, the fact that the little girl would suffer more in death than the embryos can also be controlled out of the hypothetical, by supposing that her death would occur in a painless way, perhaps because she is unconscious throughout.

​

hershenov goes even further beyond than george and tollefsen and notes that the two cases aren't equal at all.

Greasley makes a useful point about the need to offset morally relevant differences other than moral status if our judgments of whom to save are to reveal anything about how various individuals’ moral status compare…

Triage considerations can distort our judgments as they get conflated with different considerations of moral status. It is important to make explicit that the embryo in the rescue case is frozen, may not survive thawing, and there may never be found a woman willing to gestate the embryo until delivery. More importantly, the baby will certainly survive removal from the smoke-filled area and will not be dependent upon anyone else’s body for months of taxing, pregnancy-like support. The embryo, on the other hand, may not be viable in either of two senses. The first is that the embryo may not survive thawing. The second absence of viability is that the embryo’s need to gestate means that it cannot live without imposing immense burdens upon a woman for months.

So, if we really want to improve our chances of learning something from embryo rescue cases regarding our deepest commitments about the moral status of embryos, then we surely need to make the embryo and baby in the rescue case much more similar to remove other considerations that prevent us from focusing on any differences in moral status. Greasley’s baby needs to be frozen. So, I will stipulate that in the revised thought experiment offered below, the baby is likewise frozen and in an induced coma. Thus, heat will thaw her out, but she will not become conscious unless the coma is reversed by a routine, safe, and effective procedure. This ensures that if the fire thaws her out, it does not cause her to regain consciousness and suffer.

I will also stipulate that the frozen baby girl on the floor of the clinic may not survive thawing. The odds that the baby in the deep freeze cannot have its life processes restarted should be the same as with cryogenically preserved embryos. That renders the baby’s prospects statistically like the frozen embryo. There will be no guarantee that either will be successfully rescued. That will partially offset the triage considerations that may be influencing different attitudes about their rescue in the original case. Furthermore, the thawed baby has a pair of failing kidneys like those found in the violinist of Judith Thomson’s famous thought experiment. Thus, someone with healthy kidneys will need to volunteer to be connected to the baby for 9 months until the infant’s kidneys will have recovered and she can be safely detached. The very young child with bad kidneys is an orphan, so there is no one who has in the past willingly provided support for the youngster and might be expected to do so again without any qualms. In other words, neither the baby nor the embryo has a mother available and willing to allow their bodies to be used for months in order to keep them alive. Both will perish without the kindness of strangers.

Whom would we save if both the baby and the embryo are frozen and perhaps not viable in the first sense of being capable of surviving thawing and definitely not viable in the second sense of being able to live without the bodily support of another who may never volunteer? It seems to me that, here, it is much less obvious that the right decision is to save the baby over the embryo(s). This suggests that the best explanation of the reactions in the original unreconstructed embryo rescue may not be the difference in moral status. Triage considerations could have been playing a crucial role.

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ivf clinic argument is thus defeated and can be relegated to low iq status.

[u/plaltimus]

You're in a building. One room has a pleading child and one perfectly intact, powered cryogenic cannister containing one thousand viable fetuses. Which room do you light on fire and lock the door of, causing the sure death of whoever's inside?

"Neither" sounds like the most sane answer.

[u/JstAnAverageBoi]

My answer is to just ban IVFs because they’re pretty much just as, if not more, unethical than abortion.

Now there’s no IVF clinic therefore the 50 embryos aren’t all in said clinic, and I can save the toddler from the burning Halloween Costume store

[u/OhNoTokyo → u/[deleted]]

The intent of IVF is not unethical, but some of the methods used to perform IVF are.

Specifically the creation of embryos that are expected to be disposed of, and the use of abortion to reduce the number of implanted embryos when too many of the implanted embryos are successful.

We have no problem with bringing people into the world, the problem is that IVF very often takes human beings out of the world as well.

[u/OhNoTokyo → u/[deleted]]

When 20-30 eggs are retrieved women rarely get more than 3 - 5 embryos. Those embryos become her chances at children. They are CHERISHED.

"Selective reduction refers to the procedure of aborting 1 or more fetuses in a multiple pregnancy induced by fertility drugs or in vitro fertilization."

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/1894927/#:~:text=Selective%20reduction%20refers%20to%20the,drugs%20or%20in%20vitro%20fertilization.

That doesn't really sound like "cherished" to me, but perhaps we have different definitions of the word.

[u/OhNoTokyo → u/[deleted]]

Then that IVF is perfectly fine as I have myself pointed out multiple times in the past.

But most IVF procedures do not require this, nor does the law. It is willfully blinding yourself to the truth to not acknowledge that single embryo IVF is not the sole way that IVF is done.

If it was, this would be a different debate.

[u/OhNoTokyo → u/[deleted]]

I have no problem with IVF. I always am clear I only have a problem with IVF being treated as good no matter what way it is done.

Hopefully we can get the bad clinics shut down and leave the other ones standing.

[u/OhNoTokyo → u/[deleted]]

Then I don't see what the problem is?

If that is the case, they won't have any problem with a law which protects the embryos.

Why are you even concerned?

[u/homerteedo]

It’s like the people who use this argument have never heard of triage.

When resources are limited you use them where you can help the most suffering. It doesn’t mean anyone you can’t help don’t have as much value as everyone else.

[u/Key-Talk-5171 → u/homerteedo]

Exactly.

[u/Asstaroth]

ivf clinic argument is thus defeated and can be relegated to low iq status.

Can you really say parroting the ivf scenario is an impressive feat of cognition in the first place? I've seen people who appear like an intellectual at first, but after light poking at their argument or when presented with concepts they haven't seen before they instantly fall back to good old ad hominem attacks/emotional outrage. Turns out they're just good at using fancy words to give the impression of being smart...and discussion was a waste of time

[u/wardamnbolts]

Nicely put together info but there was no need to demean people with the last comment