> Therefore, the moral status of a human immediately after the time of conception t_0 is akin to that of an animal. It's not okay to torture, abuse, or injure them for fun; it's not okay for people outside their family to interfere with them; it's morally and socially acceptable and even admirable for individuals to form very deep emotional attachments with them and spend enormous resources helping and protecting them; but it is okay to kill them humanely if there simply isn't a place for them.
However, the human at t_0 will become a person at t_I and the animal won't; the fact that the human is a potential person seems to be very important to the anti-abortion side of the argument.
Besides saying "well, potential things don't count because I say so", is there a strong argument for rejecting the idea that we should consider the human at having the moral status of the person they'll later be? (Clearly we do this already in law, starting at birth or soon before.)
> "well, potential things don't count because I say so"
I would say I don't care about potential things. This is a fairly fundamental moral principle for me and if you disagree with it perhaps we do not have a true disagreement but simply different preferences.
I could point out that a moral principle involving caring about potential things has a high complexity which may be convincing to some people:
If you care about potential things you will also have to draw a line to avoid say, outlawing changing your mind about having sex because that prevents the conception of a potential person.
However, the human at t_0 will become a person at t_I and the animal won't; the fact that the human is a potential person seems to be very important to the anti-abortion side of the argument.
Besides saying "well, potential things don't count because I say so", is there a strong argument for rejecting the idea that we should consider the human at having the moral status of the person they'll later be? (Clearly we do this already in law, starting at birth or soon before.)