What would you choose if you have to choose between 1,000 embryos and one child in fire? is Patrick Tomilson’s question that abortion foes cannot answer
What is the tricky question sci-fi writer Patrick Tomlinson poses, that abortion right opponents refuse to answer?
A week ago we witnessed a viral tweetstorm by the science fiction author Patrick S. Tomlinson. He posed a question to abortion right opponents, but according to him they find his question too difficult to answer.
Tomlinson introduced this subject with a single tweet:
“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.”
The actual question Patrick S. Tomlinson poses to abortion rights opponents is whether they would choose to save 1,000 embryos instead of a single five year old child.
He gives one possible scenario: “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.”
According to him this is a simple scenario that has only two possible outcomes. However, Tomlinson says that not a single person wants to say what would be their choice because as he thinks “the correct answer destroys their argument. And there IS a correct answer, which is why the pro-life crowd hates the question.”
The sci-fi author says that even after a decade he still haven’t got a straight A or B answer to his question from anti-abortion people. And he thinks that he won’t get an answer in the near future.
“They will never answer honestly, because we all instinctively understand the right answer is ‘A’”, Tomlinson wrote. He further explains that “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.”
Tomlinson explains that posing such question to anti-abortion people actually makes their arguments fall flat and that is why they refuse to answer the question, which additionally proves that they are afraid their answer will prove that in fact his arguments are true.
He continues and adds that there is no person on Earth who believes that an embryo is equivalent to a child. According to him “that person does not exist.” He says that if you find a person claiming such thing, he is probably lying to you.
“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 claim to are trying to manipulate you so they can control women,” Tomlinson wrote.
He advises people that they shouldn’t allow to be manipulated. “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.”
This is how Tomlinson ends his tweetstorm. The next day he shared that he woke up with bunch of new followers. This is his reaction: “Holy crap. I literally wake up and there’s another thousands of you. Welcome new followers. I write books and yell at the alt-right on social media.”
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