Confusion about pro-life positions

I suppose I am breaking some blogging rules of conduct in doing this, but I don’t really have any interest in commenting over on the newly created blog by Michael Egnor. And my question concerns what one of his commenters said rather than what he said. So here it is.

crusadeREX is one of the more fervent supporters on Egnor’s new blog, commenting on a fairly regular basis. He shares many views with the doctor including a strong stance against abortion. Or so I thought. One commenter, Andrea, asked on Egnor’s blog:

"Well I do think that human embryos and fetuses are human beings" -So, if you had the option of saving 100 embryos or one baby -you would the embryos ? [sic]

This was a moral dilemma that I imagined up some years ago. I have not seen this dilemma presented elsewhere, but that just means I haven’t looked hard enough to find out who came up with it first. To wit:

You are a firefighter called to the scene of burning IVF clinic. Upon entering you see one of the staff, unconscious and pinned to the floor. You also see a liquid nitrogen tank containing 100 human embryos which are all slated for implantation. The structure is ready to collapse. You must leave and won’t have any time to return. Do you remove the staff member or the nitrogen tank? (1)

My assumption, and the answer I have received from some pro-life individuals, is that a pro-life individual would be obligated to remove the tank. If life begins at (or near) fertilization, and if all lives have equivalent worth, then it is more moral and internally consistent to save the 100 human embryos than the one staff member. To answer otherwise would be to recognize either that the definition of life is fuzzy or that the worth of human beings is partly determined by their developmental stage. crusadeREX, however gave a rather surprising response:

Are they petri-dish cultured embryos created to perish in the lab; be used in experiments, harvested for stem cells, or frozen to meet another such engineered doom in the future? Will they never be given the potential to grow into full developed adult homo sapiens?
OR, are they naturally procreated gestating embryos already in situ and developing with the potential to become fully developed adult human beings? OBVIOUSLY this distinction between the potential of these hypothetical embryos is very important in how we answer the question.

So potential is the key here, and potential seems to exist only in the uterus. It does raise the rather obvious point that pro-life debaters will often bring up. The difference between the embryo in the tank at the clinic and the freshly implanted embryo at the clinic is only a matter of environment, and environment cannot be a determinant of whether or not the embryo has a right to life.

There is a way to accept this pro-life assertion and still choose the staff member over the tank. If potential (meaning successful implantation) is important one might argue that, with an average successful embryo transfer rate of about 25% depending on who you ask, the embryos in the tank only have a probability of potential life, not potential life itself (2), and with this distinction there is is no moral dilemma. But this would raise a further question. Even within the population of implanted embryos there are some genetic conditions where the potential to survive gestation is virtually zero and some, such as Trisomy 18, where the potential of long-term survival outside the uterus is virtually zero or at least very low. As such all implanted embryos only have a probability for potential life, therefore removing any moral dilemma in their termination. I don’t think that is where crusadREX wanted to go.

One could of course argue that ‘potential’ implies probability and call me a dumbass. I know that (3). Which is why the above argument would be poor and you are still left trying to explain why environment should be a barrier to human rights, not to mention why potential should enter into it. I simply offered it as a potential work around because I am having difficulty holding together these three doctrines that crusadREX seems to hold simultaneously: a) human life begins at fertilization, b) all humans with life have an equal right to life c) humans which are not given the potential to develop to live ex utero have no explicit right to life. I really thought I was misreading it until crusadeREX doubled down:

Andreas, You begin: "The embryos in the petri-dish have the same potential for development (and could, theoretically, be used for in-vitro fertilization). So, your distinction is meaningless, and the moral dilemma stands". That is factually incorrect. The Petri-dish will not gestate them, deliver them, or nuture and love them. These little creatures of potential -in their earliest stages have NO CHANCE, unless the scientists that created them reinsert them successfully into a surrogate. Their potential is limited by the sentient beings who will willingly and with intent create them and USE them up as a resource, despite the inherit potential of the embryonic cells themselves..

Surely this can't be the majority opinion amongst pro-life individuals; otherwise whence the opposition to embryonic stem cell research? I must be making a mistake somewhere, because this is not a point of view I have seen before. Perhaps someone will enlighten me.

1) For bonus points does it matter if the staff member is conscious? Does it matter if the staff member is administrative, a nurse, or a doctor? What if it was a female patient who was there to be implanted? Would it be moral to attempt to remove both the tank and the staff member knowing that none of you would make it out of there? Does it matter if the embryos are slated for implantation?

2) By contrast the staff member has neither the probability of potential life, nor potential life, but actual life itself.

3) That potential implies probability, though I do know that I am a dumbass too.