So its ok to kill a child human but you think its morally wrong to kill an animal for food?
It's not, in general, ok to kill a human child. An embryo or a foetus is not a child. A child is a human being that has been born, or is at least theoretically able to exist independently of its mother.
It would be as wrong to eat a human child as it is wrong to eat a cow.
In the cases of both meat eating and abortion, we have to weigh up two sets of interests that are in conflict. For example, in meat eating we have to weigh up the human enjoyment and nutrition from killing and eating the meat against the interest in the animal in continuing to live its life as a sentient being. Quite obviously, in such a case the human enjoyment of meat must take a back seat.
In abortion, we must weigh up the health of the mother (both mental physical) and the future of the child (e.g. if it has to live with something like Down's syndrome, or live in deprived circumstances or whatever) against the fact that the foetus would otherwise live at least some kind of life. In such a case, the particular circumstances will have a major impact on which way the decision ought to go. You can't lay down a hard-and-fast rule that says you're never allowed to have an abortion, or that you must always abort. (Well, you can, but that's immoral.)
A fertilised chicken egg is litterally inhert unless its put into the proper heat enviroment (either under a clucky hen or in an incubator).
You don't need to eat fertilised eggs. Why on earth would you want to?
MOM i dont know where your going with that but this thread is about aborting human fetuses vs eatting fertilised chicken eggs. James claimed the second was immoral because its fertilised and there for it is a chicken and its immoral to kill it.
It seems to me to be
prima facie immoral to kill something just for your own temporary enjoyment. Don't you think?
I want to see how he reconciles this surposed immorality of killing a chicken embryo with his position on abortion. He has already stated that a human life is worth more than a chickens life, and he has stated that both become human\chicken at fertilisation. If its "killing" to eat a chicken egg at that point and therefore immoral, then surly he must belive that abortion is MORE immoral because the human life is more important
You're only looking at half the picture. This is a contest of rights and interests. You always seem to focus only on one set of interests, while completely ignoring the other half of the picture. When you talk about meat eating, you only ever look at human interests, while ignoring animal interests completely. And now, when it comes to abortion, you seem only to be interested in the foetus's interests, to the exclusion of the mother's.
