Too many people believe that one’s emotional response is a good indicator of the objective value of something. What one is more apt to do, the argument goes, is an infallible indicator of what is right.

Not true.

There has been a pro-abortion question bandied about on social media recently that goes something like this: If an embryo in a petri dish and a three year old child were falling from a cliff and you could only save one, which would you choose? Most people say they would save the three year old, just like most people would say they are more appalled at a late-term abortion than an earlier one. Every semester I take a poll of my college students, asking them which they would save from drowning on a secluded beach if they could only save one – their dog or a stranger. Most choose the dog. What does this all tell us? It tells us that many, if not most, people think with their emotions. Although this has been traditionally seen as part of the feminine genius, it’s also true that wise women and men submit to objective truth even when it means emotional distress. Why? It is never a good idea to allow one’s emotions to govern the self, especially when they contradict what the mind knows to be true and good. This disordered inclination is a consequence of original sin.

Although it is beneath human dignity to be made in a petri dish, choosing to save the three year old does not mean he or she is more objectively valuable. We know with our minds that the lives of both parties, which includes their potential futures, are of equal value. To think otherwise would contradict the idea that ‘all men are created equal, endowed by their Creator with unalienable rights, the first of which is the right to life.’ Further, simple reason tells us that if the three year old were killed as a embryo, he or she would never have made it to three.

Submitting to what the mind knows to be true – regardless of what the senses detect or how the emotions react – is a sign of maturity and a defining element of what it means to be human.

The answer to the question that’s been on social media? How about this: “I’m not sure about how I’d react in real time but I know they are of equal value.”  Nonetheless, the dog/stranger question ought to be more obvious and much easier than the one between humans.