Or if you just believe everything is pre-ordained. The argument to the religious right is that if God is omniscient, then He knows which sperm will hit the egg, so 1 second prior to conception is exactly the same as conception in terms of the odds a given sperm or egg becomes a baby. And 1 second prior to that, and 1 second prior to that, all the way back to Adam and Eve.
So even if conception is when the baby is “ensouled” (hundreds of years ago they thought “the quickening” when the mother first felt the baby kick was when it got ensouled so that choice is arbitrary but whatever if it’s a religious tenet I don’t want to go against it) it’s not meaningfully impacting whether or not an ensouled baby is born any more than birth itself is.
It’s all shades of gray all the way down, there is no morally “correct” hard line.
Or if you just believe everything is pre-ordained. The argument to the religious right is that if God is omniscient, then He knows which sperm will hit the egg, so 1 second prior to conception is exactly the same as conception in terms of the odds a given sperm or egg becomes a baby. And 1 second prior to that, and 1 second prior to that, all the way back to Adam and Eve.
So even if conception is when the baby is “ensouled” (hundreds of years ago they thought “the quickening” when the mother first felt the baby kick was when it got ensouled so that choice is arbitrary but whatever if it’s a religious tenet I don’t want to go against it) it’s not meaningfully impacting whether or not an ensouled baby is born any more than birth itself is.
It’s all shades of gray all the way down, there is no morally “correct” hard line.