A fetus generally isn't believed to be a conscious entity (nor is a newborn for that matter). The important distinction vs. a kidney is more that it's something that likely will become conscious in the future.

The question of abortion is really interesting in that it scratches at a deeper moral question-- precisely why do we consider murder to be wrong?

In my view, there are a few different reasons. One is that we are preventing future consciousness for a being by ending the body's ability to be conscious. That one certainly applies to abortion. But another is that we hurt the people that have relationships with or dependencies on that conscious being. That one doesn't apply to abortion at all.

The latter isn’t a valid argument, because it would suggest the morality of murdering someone depends entirely on how many friends they have

But you’ve hit on my overarching point. The current pro choice argument is largely nonsense because the atheistic position doesn’t have a good answer to the “why is murder wrong” question.

If you don’t consider life sacred, the majority of our legal system unwinds. It gets even worse considering the pro choice cadre is also anti death penalty

The west is only now truly grappling with Nietzsches God is Dead and few realize it

> The latter isn’t a valid argument, because it would suggest the morality of murdering someone depends entirely on how many friends they have

I think you misunderstand my point. There are many reason murder is harmful, and abortion applies equally for some but not all of them. So the morality doesn't depend "entirely" on any of them (including the two I listed).

I do actually think its worse to e.g., kill a husband and a father of young children, compared to killing a hermit with no social ties. And it seems like society feels the same way-- otherwise we wouldn't hear about how victims are "a father of five" in tragic news stories.

It's not about the kidney, it's about the person receiving the kidney. (Or not receiving it, when they first thought they would.)

I'm not taking a stance on the overall issue, but this is such a flawed comparison because a baby is dependent solely on the mother and not a large pool of potential donors.

Moreover, in this hypothetical, there's no indication that the donor made a choice that put the recipient in need of a kidney (whereas parents' engaging in sex predictably results in a child in need of birth--recall that we're not debating point-of-life at this point in the thread).

Personally I'm not seeing a foetus as being a conscious creature either. At some point it becomes one when its complexity level can support that, but not early on. Certainly it has the potential for that, assuming all goes well, but at the maximum point of normal abortion in the UK (24 weeks), I'm not buying it.

A baby isn't any more a "conscious creature" at 24 weeks than at 4 weeks post birth. The vast majority of the final trimester is spent gaining weight and finishing lung development, not on fundamental brain development.

I'm fine with abortions being accessible, more power to you, but this is something that makes me uneasy at a philosophical level, if that makes sense. Because you start asking yourself when exactly that moment is. Like, I get it, it's the stereotypical engineer/scientist kind of thinking, but there has to be one moment where the fetus isn't a conscious creature, and one second later it is. Can we ever know? Is a newborn even conscious? It hardly looks like it to me. It's pretty much acting on instincts only.

There are levels of consciousness. For instance, a brain dead boy lived for 12 years with a rare disease in which his brain was replaced with fluid. With a brain stem he could still react to light, sound, and other stimulus - but not much else.

In both cases, something is dependent on your body to live. Are you morally required to sacrifice your body for theirs? That has nothing to do with convenience. If anything is adding "pseudo-moralism" to the discussion, it's referring to this sacrifice as a "moral imperative."