I’ve read your comments, and I want to offer a response to those points one at a time. Your first comment says that you don’t see how I have demonstrated the humanity of the unborn through experimentation and observation. An online article is not the best medium for experimentation and observation, but I do outline why an embryo is alive, and why it must be a human life. By “humanity” I mean both human and alive. I avoid the “personhood” debate explicitly, because I think it is arbitrary and impossible to adjudicate.

I did a ctrl+f search for the word “moral” in my piece, it is used 6 times (including in words such as “immortality”. In all 6 cases I am commenting on other people’s views, I do not even in one instance use the word “moral” or “immoral” in my own voice. My case is that the fetus is harmed by its own death, and as the last paragraph outlines, this harm must be weighed against other harms. The harm specifically is having been deprived of a future of value, or desirable experiences.

It is true that we cannot test the immorality of homicide, which is why I do not say it is immoral (I had this category of objection in mind as I wrote, and my editor added the 3 point argument which introduces the concept of morality). I do think however, that the harm an embryo incurs by its own death can be observed indirectly by watching people who were not aborted (all living people) live lives that are worth living by their own standards.

I am not a pacifist, and I do believe homicide can be justified. I do not explore every in and out of the abortion debate in my article. The cases you cite of self-defense and accidents would likely be exceptions for abortion, just as they would be for other homicides.

I think you are correct to focus on suffering inflicted, because this gives us hope of testing ethical claims, because now we have a metric, and not mere opinion. However, I think you are mistaken to ignore opportunity costs and deprivation. Deporting someone to a poorer country would harm that person because they are living a less fruitful life (in all likelihood). I cite the case of drinking heavily while pregnant, which would deprive the fetus of a healthy future. What the fetus stands to lose in the future (its entire life) must be weighed against other harms. We do this for other humans, such as infants (I speak at length about infanticide in the article) and I do not think we can ignore the fetus’s future.

Loss of future happiness, from one cause or another must be considered harmful, otherwise we could justify not educating certain children on the grounds that their losses are merely theoretical.

Thank you for your feedback. I hope this comment reaches you. As you may have noticed, I ignore the majority of my critics, but I take your objections more seriously.