Cameron and Cayden Boozer are rising basketball stars playing for Duke University. But long before either of them had even looked at a basketball, the twins already had the distinction of doing something few people have the opportunity to do: saving an older sibling’s life. The boys’ brother, Carmani Boozer, was born with sickle cell disease, a diagnosis that limits quality of life through higher risk of infection, fatigue, and chronic pain. The typical lifespan of a person with sickle cell disease is about 30 years less than average, with about 95% reaching adulthood.

Carmani’s best chance at a normal life was through a bone marrow transplant. The best type of donation in this situation is stem cells gathered from the umbilical cord of a sibling. However, both of Carmani’s parents, CeCe and Carlos Boozer, a former NBA star, were carriers of the sickle cell trait, meaning that any child they had naturally had a higher risk of being born with the disease as well. So, the parents turned to invitro fertilization (IVF). 34 eggs were harvested from CeCe, with 10 going on to become fertilized, sickle cell-free embryos. Of the 10, only two were a perfect match for Carmani. Thus, Cameron and Cayden were born, with stem cells from their umbilical cords being harvested soon after their birth. After a bone marrow transplant and chemotherapy, Carmani is now disease-free and an athlete as well.

But while some may see Cameron and Cayden as medical miracles, others view the circumstances of their birth as a moral dilemma. The boys’ mother, CeCe, admitted her own struggles in the ethics of having the twins in the documentary, “Blood Brothers.” “You feel like you’re having a baby for the wrong reason. I just felt guilty because it was more out of love for Carmani. It wasn’t out of love for them,” she admitted. Carlos also had struggles. “There was times where I felt we did the right thing and there was times I felt like we didn’t do the right thing,” he said. “It was, we need to have a baby so that we could cure Carmani. That’s not how we wanted to have it, but that’s what ended up going down.”

For the boys, they are good-humored about the circumstances of their birth. “I mean, they were only born because I was sick, pretty much. But they saved my life. That’s what their comeback is,” Carmani joked in an interview. “Carmani was born with sickle cell, and they found out that he needed to have the surgery, the bone marrow transplant. The best option was to obviously have us, to have the transplant,” Cayden told ESPN.

For pro-lifers, IVF has become a sticking point of what a commitment to life beginning at conception really means. While many Christians with fertility struggles have turned to IVF to start a family, others have accused the process of treating children like a commodity. In the Boozers’ case, 10 embryos were created. Only 2 were used. That means 8 embryos, fitting the definition of conceived, were “discarded.” “The heavy weight to bear here is the fact that science affirms life begins at conception, so we can say with certainty that while a life now has the opportunity to be saved, lives were devalued and discarded at the same time,” wrote Christian contributor Jon Root for Outkick. “Through this process of IVF, children are treated as a commodity. While fighting to save their son’s life, an admirable, innate desire of any parent faced with such circumstances, they treated the children created through IVF, as expendable, spare parts, and raw material for another’s survival,” he added.

Reactions on social media were mixed. “This sounds like an amazing thing they were able to do. They were able to save their actual human child and get two more wonderful kids. The embryos were just science (not human life). We are lucky we live in a world where this is possible through science,” wrote one user. Another, however, struggled with the implications. “I saw this last Sunday morning I totally understand why the Boozers made the decision they made,” wrote the user. “What’s wild is Camari is able to tell his brothers that he is the reason why they were born. Lucky for them they weren’t the other 32.”