Is it immoral to kill -potential- human beings? That is, a cell or cluster of cells that has the potential to be made into a human, but is not currently one. (2 week old fertilised eggs aren't human, only potential humans, for example)
by 
Twhupfold
ANSWERS: 8
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To borrow from a previous answer of mine... I just can’t logically get around the fact that there’s no magic point at which somebody becomes human. I’m a human, and I once was a clump of cells. I didn’t “come from” a clump of cells; I was one. The clump of cells was alive and growing. It was not an internal organ of my mother. It was not even a temporary pseudo-organ resident of my mother’s body like the placenta. It was genetically the same person as me. It was me at one stage of my development. At one point in my physical existence I was that clump of cells, albeit not as cute as I am now. If I had been aborted, the clump of cells would have died, and my life would have ended. So... yes, it's immoral to kill a clump of cells that's a human.
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Not in my opinion. Approximately 50% of such cell clusters fail to implant in the womb anyway, so nature aborts many of them. And if you trace life back to this stage, why not go further? Each ovum is a potential human; would it not me immoral for a woman to let such a potential human to be discarded without making a reasonable attempt to fertilise it and create the potential human.
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Yes and i think society is leaning that way as we know more about the process.
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Where do you draw the line? Isn't a sperm and an egg a "potential human being", simply stored in two disconnected cells? If so, then every time a woman menstruates she is committing murder, and every man who masturbates is a serial killer. Not to mention condoms- they would be WMDs. Instead, we have to pick a point of fetal development and call that "human". In my opinion, that point is after the second trimester.
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No, not really. It's just a bunch of cells, it's not a human. Now, it is however, not very nice to go around killing babies.
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Yes, it is clearly immoral to kill a cluster of cells because it is fully human. Zygotes are not human. Answer to the "magic line" problem: At the point of conception, all the genetic material that we will ever have is present. Answer to the "natural abortion" problem: People die of sickness all the time. How does this give us the right to kill them? Answer to the "cellular human potential": That cellular body would not be genetically different from the host.
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nope, and those clusters can save many many lives
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I believe that life begins at conception, so I do believe it is immoral to kill an unborn baby. I am not asking you to change your beliefs, though. This is just my opinion, and I don't have to get an abortion if I don't want to.
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