Ask a Bible college Student

[Catholic_Lady]

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.      

Why are you now bringing society's view into this?  I'm asking what you think.  How our society views it is irrelevant.

Here's the thing, if you want to be consistent in your views, I did deliberately kill people.  The doctor straight up asked us what we wanted to do with the remaining embryos.  The choices were to keep them frozen(expensive), donate them for research or discard them.  We chose to donate them, meaning they would eventually be destroyed.  If you believe those are humans, I knowingly sent people to their death.  I am as culpable as any other murderer.  Do I deserve life imprisonment for that?

Like I said, you didn't actually think they were people. You think they are just lumps of cells no different from cells that shed off our bodies every day. I think you are a decent person and I imagine if you had thought they were people you would never have donated them to be experimented on and later destroyed. For the 4th time, I do not think you deserve life imprisonment.   

As for why I keep bringing society into this, it's because I'm talking about personal culpability. Which plays a huge role in whether or not I think a person is deserving of going to jail, which was the question you were asking me. If you can't understand that in the way I have already explained it, then I don't know what else to tell you. We may just have to leave it as is and move on.