Very good argument imo! It shows there’s a different explanation rather than “people don’t really care about dying embryos” that can be derived from this comparison. People tend to differentiate between what happens “naturally” (or accidentally) vs deliberate human actions. When it comes to wild animal suffering, even if people believe it exists, many will think something along the lines of “it’s not human-made suffering, so it’s not our moral responsibility to do something about it”—which is weird to a consequentialist, but probably quite intuitive for most people.
It takes a few non-obvious steps in reasoning to get to the conclusion that we should care about wild animal suffering. And while fewer steps may be required in the embryo situation, it is still very conceivable that a person who actually cares a lot about embryos might not initially get to the conclusion that the scope of the problem exceeds abortion.
Very good argument imo! It shows there’s a different explanation rather than “people don’t really care about dying embryos” that can be derived from this comparison. People tend to differentiate between what happens “naturally” (or accidentally) vs deliberate human actions. When it comes to wild animal suffering, even if people believe it exists, many will think something along the lines of “it’s not human-made suffering, so it’s not our moral responsibility to do something about it”—which is weird to a consequentialist, but probably quite intuitive for most people.
It takes a few non-obvious steps in reasoning to get to the conclusion that we should care about wild animal suffering. And while fewer steps may be required in the embryo situation, it is still very conceivable that a person who actually cares a lot about embryos might not initially get to the conclusion that the scope of the problem exceeds abortion.