"If the zygote is left alone and is about to turn into two lives what difference does that make to how we treat this new life?" RE: Martin Ibn Warriq

If a healthy, fertile woman has sex without any form of contraception during the most fertile part of her cycle, the egg released from her ovaries has a high chance of becoming a baby/s if left alone. Shouldn't we accord the egg the same value that we accord to the zygote?

What a great name you have Mary - queen of heaven. But are you serious about that??

Maryan: "Shouldn't we accord the egg the same value that we accord to the zygote?"

And what about the poor old spermatozoon, who - having borne the weight of countless generations of evolution in the form of a uniquely configured genome - has swum the swim of his short and unicellular life, and won gamete Gold?

Actually, I think they should all be accorded the same social value - zilch. Zygotes, ova and spermatozoa are certainly human, but they are in no way people.

I extend this minimal level of humanity to embryos and foetuses, except that in their case, medical or spontaneous abortion or miscarriage may have very significant meaning and sense of loss to putative parents.

Human biology is fascinating and indeed quite wondrous, but there is no way that the biological precursors to birth are the equivalent of infant people, who have consciousness, cognition and identity. There is no chance of achieving this status if you haven't been born.

Well your ancestors and relatives might be non-human... that might explain a few missing links in your article.