One of the films I saw recently to celebrate the 25th anniversary of its first release was Sophie’s Choice, directed by Alan J. Pakula with actors Meryl Streep, Kevin Kline, Peter MacNicol and Rita Karin.

Sophie now lives in New York with her long time partner but the film revolves around a choice that Sophie had to make when she was a prisoner at the Auschwitz concentration death camp. On finding out that Sophie and her two young children, a boy and girl, were Catholic, a high-ranking camp guard had given Sophie a difficult choice. One child could be saved and sent to the children’s camp only if Sophie herself chose which one of them it was to be! The other option would have been that both her children be sent to the extermination chambers. Sophie chose what she thought was the lesser of two evils. She chose to save a life rather than lose both. She chose that her son should live while her daughter should die. Why the one and not the other, we are not told. Sophie survived her experience in the camp and went on to live in Brooklyn. However, the fall-out of that personal choice haunted her for the rest of her life and ended up committing suicide with her partner.

When I was a student in ethics, a classical case was presented to us to highlight a principle of ethics. Imagine that one were a mayor of a small town of 25,000 people (which I was). Imagine that a group of terrorists phoned the mayor and told him that unless a particular innocent person was handed over to them for certain retribution and death, they would proceed to kill 500 people at random instead. One obviously found oneself torn between saving the life of that one person or that of 500. One could be tempted to choose the lives of the 500 over that of the one, as it would be the lesser of two evils. Of course the answer depends very much on whether one is an objective or a utilitarian (subjective) ethicist, but one could not make a greater mistake than to reason this way if one were to be objective in the type of ethics applied.

The right to innocent human life is absolute, which means that nothing may qualify it. We use the principle of perplexity (or lesser of two evils) to help us successfully solve some problems in life, but it cannot be used to solve all problems, especially those where innocent human life is involved. We all have an intellect and a will and of course we use both when it comes to the consideration of the moral object and the application of the moral act both being separate fields.

In the latter case, it was not the mayor who was initiating the action, to threaten to murder the five hundred people or the one person. The immoral act was being instigated by a group of terrorists/murderers and the mayor’s job was to seek to keep the law and preserve human life and public order at all cost. That should be his/her absolute imperative. It was not in his/her public remit to hand over innocent people to be murdered. His/her job was to dispel the threat as much as was humanly possible, but if the terrorists went ahead and murdered the 500 people anyway that was purely on their moral/legal account and not the mayor’s. He/she would have betrayed the public good by handing over an innocent person to be murdered instead of the 500. The mayor would have co-operated in evil had he/she done so!

Sophie’s dilemma was similar. It was the German officer who was threatening to murder her innocent children. She could ethically have chosen to have nothing to do with this. She need not have chosen the life of one of her children over the life of the other and thereby co-operating in the evil that others had intended. If the officer in this camp of death was threatening to kill both her children, then he and he alone was responsible for his own moral action of two child murders and Sophie need not have co-operated in this moral act. She might have been able to live with that choice but in effect she was not able to live with the one she actually took!

The main issue with IVF is similar. No one is entitled to remove the life of an innocent human being even in the early stage of embryonic development. There is a profound moral difference between any ordinary cell of the species Homo sapiens and an organism of the species Homo sapiens at the one-cell stage! There is here no issue of the lesser of two evils presented by medical technology, which could choose to freeze and ultimately destroy innocent human life in order to help a couple get pregnant. This issue is a non-starter and the State ought not cooperate in this moral action otherwise it becomes itself morally and legally co-responsible for the destruction of innocent human lives. This is not in the interest of the common good. Fortunately, the technology itself now presents us with other options that are not destructive to human embryos and which should present the rational way forward. Best practice scenarios should be always based on full respect for human dignity and it may ensue that we ought to change our ways of behaviour and practice in order to conform to the rerum novarum of the technology itself.

AMPLE make this bed.

Make this bed with awe;

In it wait till judgment break Excellent and fair.

Be its mattress straight,

Be its pillow round;

Let no sunrise’ yellow noise

Interrupt this ground.”

Time and Eternity -

Emily Dickinson

1830-1886