Sure, you can claim that embryos have moral value for some magical God-given reason. But my intuition is that in their hearts, the embryo-valuers are using some notion of potential full human life to ground their assessment. In which case again we run into the arbitrariness of the fertilization cutoff point.
Some people believe embryos have souls which may impact their moral judgement. Soul can be considered as “full human life” in moral terms. I think attributing this to purely potential human life may not be accurate, since the intuitions for essentialist notions of continuity of selfhood can be often fairly strong among certain people.
Some people believe embryos have souls which may impact their moral judgement. Soul can be considered as “full human life” in moral terms. I think attributing this to purely potential human life may not be accurate, since the intuitions for essentialist notions of continuity of selfhood can be often fairly strong among certain people.