system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
CMV: it doesn't make sense to value potential life

UPDATE: holy macaroni I finally got through them all. All 328 comments. I need a break from Reddit for a while because I've been hyperfocused on this all day. I'll reply to any further comments tomorrow



This is in relation to the abortion debate. A point where I often get stuck with pro-lifers is the value of potential life - potential consciousness might be a better term, but for the sake of brevity and keeping to widely used terms I'll say potential life.

UPDATE: the term potential life is confusing people so I'll be using the term potential consciousness from now on

So here's how the debate usually goes.

Me: why is there anything immoral about aborting an embryo that hasn't developed a brain yet? It isn't conscious, it has no feelings, it's like killing a plant.

Pro-lifer: but it could have feelings one day, you're denying it its potential consciousness!

Me: but why is potential consciousness important?

Things have never gone beyond that point. I either get no reply, or weird circular logic, or my opponent in the debate resorts to rambling about me being a baby killer.

I have two issues with potential consciousness. The first is, I don't see any reason for it to be important or valued. If that potential consciousness doesn't come to be, no one has suffered. A conscious being has not died. To never be born is not the same as to die.

The other issue is that if we follow the logic of valuing potential consciousness, then why do we stop at the embryo? An embryo is a potential consciousness, but so is a sperm. A sperm could fuse with an egg and grow to create a person. Why is it ok to waste *that* potential consciousness? As far as I know most pro-lifers aren't desperately trying to have as many children as possible. Why are abortions wrong but not condoms, or periods (an egg being wasted), or masturbation, or being single, or abstinence?



UPDATE: This is getting a lot of traction and I'm finding myself repeating certain points over and over so here's a list of commonly made points and my rebuttals.

A: Would you invest, or garden, or plan for the future?
Yes. I never said potential value doesn't exist, I just don't see the value in potential consciousness specifically 

B: But don't you value LIFE?

A plant is alive.

C: But don't you value HUMAN life?

A tumour is human and alive. I also don't see why humans should be regarded as more important than other intelligent species such as dolphins and elephants. And finally, humanity is awful and is destroying the world, so the less humans the better.

D: But an embryo has unique diploid human DNA

My response here would be similar to point C, but also this implies that an identical twin is less of a person than most people

E: but coma patients aren't conscious!

A coma patient was conscious in the past and had a personality, identity, rights, and things they wanted to do. Their life is valuable because they attained consciousness. Would have been is not the same as was

F: but expecting parents value their baby's potential life!

This is subjective value, and no one would assign any subjective value to my embryo if I became pregnant. I wouldn't, my partner wouldn't, my doctor ought to remain objective, and no one else would know. To convince me that early term abortion is bad you'd have to either convince me that I myself subjectively value my nonexistent children (good luck), or that an embryo's potential consciousness has OBJECTIVE value.
gpt
A person in a coma doesn't have significant brain activity, and a person in a persistent vegetative state has zero higher brain activity, yet people in both situations have legal protections, despite having less brain activity than many fetuses.

Assigning personhood to developmental stages also creates weird situations where a baby born prematurely is more of a person than a fetus set to be delivered on time despite the fetus being more developed than the premature baby.

> An embryo is a potential life,

Not a potential life. An embryo is **a** life. One that many people, yourself included, are okay with terminating. Pro-life people are not.

> The other issue is that if we follow the logic of valuing potential life, then why do we stop at the embryo? 

An embryo is a unique diploid human. A sperm is not.