Ask a Bible college Student

[Catholic_Lady]

I'm not sure why you think I'm dancing around giving my opinion. I feel I made myself very clear... twice. Yeah, I think what you did should be illegal. But while it isn't, I don't think people who did it "deserve" to go to jail for doing something that they neither have a personal ethical objection to, or is against the law. I don't know what else you want me to say.  

Because you're giving conflicting statements and falling back on the law instead of stating how you actually feel.  I made it clear that my question had nothing to do with the law, yet you keep bringing it up.

What I want you to say is what you think the punishment should be based upon the fact that you think it's illegal and believe that I essentially murdered several humans.  If you truly believe that embryos are humans just like everyone else, what you think should be the punishment for what I've done should reflect that.  If you don't think I deserve 25 to life for each embryo, you're acknowledging that an embryo is different from a living, breathing human.

Again, it's about culpability. You didn't deliberately kill people when you did IVF, and neither was that even your intended outcome. You did nothing illegal and you don't even believe they were human beings. All this context greatly diminishes culpability and separates you from someone who goes out and murders people. While I believe it's just as tragic that they died as anyone else, I don't believe your role in it is anywhere equivalent to, say, a mass murderer.

As for how long a person should be in jail for doing it if it was illegal? I don't know. It's hard to say when we live in a world that doesn't value unborn human life in the same way. Aborting a baby, for example, doesn't make someone a bad person like murdering their neighbor does. Not because the life is any less sacred, but because of culpability. Because in our society they are not viewed as human beings in the way they should be. So people who get abortions are just doing what is normal and accepted in our society. They aren't criminals and they aren't bad people.

Perhaps really far down the future when society values the lives of the unborn and views them in the same way as born folks, the punishment should be the exact same. But while it doesn't, it can't be. Because we're just not there yet and so culpability isn't the same.    

As for the second part, that's why I'm ethically opposed to IVF, as I said earlier. Unless it can be done in a way that gives each offspring the respect it deserves as a human being, I don't think it should be done at all.

So you're okay with saying that my kids never should have been born?  That my kids exist only because of an immoral practice that never should have been allowed?  Would you be able to look a child born through IVF in the eye and tell them that?

No, I'm just sorry their siblings aren't here with them.