As of an example with an egg I have an easy answer. The probability of an egg becoming a human is much much lower without fertilization. Few hundreds eggs are being released throughout a woman’s life but she has only few children, so following the logic of moral consequences being correlated to killing a certain percentage of a human being, killing an egg would be 100 times less bad than killing a fetus.
The latter argument seems to be from different topic. Every cell of my body is being replaced throughout a period of approximately 6 years. Does it mean I’m not myself anymore?
As of an example with an egg I have an easy answer. The probability of an egg becoming a human is much much lower without fertilization.
I don’t think you’re answering the question DanielLC wanted to ask. I think the question is more like this: If you refrain from fertilizing an egg (say, in some random woman walking by on the street), isn’t that as bad as committing murder?
I meant that there’s some chance the egg will be fertilized, and if you prevent that from happening, are you killing it?
Granted, the probability decreases gradually until the egg is ejected or whatever it does, but you could make an abortion method that works the same way. You continuously do something that’s harmful to the fetus. The probability of it surviving decreases gradually.
If I’m following this, it’d be a few percent as bad as murder—the odds of attempted fertilization successfully leading to a new human are not all that great. But that still implies that skipping twenty or so opportunities to attempt fertilization (assuming no externalities) is equivalent to killing one adult human, which is a fairly bizarre conclusion to come to.
I think there’s a given egg that will be fertilized of you conceive at a given time. It’s pretty unlikely that even this egg will become human, but it’s still significant.
Suppose that the girl finds out that the condom broke. The probability of that egg getting fertilized just increased dramatically. It still probably won’t happen, but now the probability is even higher.
As of an example with an egg I have an easy answer. The probability of an egg becoming a human is much much lower without fertilization. Few hundreds eggs are being released throughout a woman’s life but she has only few children, so following the logic of moral consequences being correlated to killing a certain percentage of a human being, killing an egg would be 100 times less bad than killing a fetus.
The latter argument seems to be from different topic. Every cell of my body is being replaced throughout a period of approximately 6 years. Does it mean I’m not myself anymore?
I don’t think you’re answering the question DanielLC wanted to ask. I think the question is more like this: If you refrain from fertilizing an egg (say, in some random woman walking by on the street), isn’t that as bad as committing murder?
I meant that there’s some chance the egg will be fertilized, and if you prevent that from happening, are you killing it?
Granted, the probability decreases gradually until the egg is ejected or whatever it does, but you could make an abortion method that works the same way. You continuously do something that’s harmful to the fetus. The probability of it surviving decreases gradually.
If I’m following this, it’d be a few percent as bad as murder—the odds of attempted fertilization successfully leading to a new human are not all that great. But that still implies that skipping twenty or so opportunities to attempt fertilization (assuming no externalities) is equivalent to killing one adult human, which is a fairly bizarre conclusion to come to.
I think there’s a given egg that will be fertilized of you conceive at a given time. It’s pretty unlikely that even this egg will become human, but it’s still significant.
Suppose that the girl finds out that the condom broke. The probability of that egg getting fertilized just increased dramatically. It still probably won’t happen, but now the probability is even higher.