Atrios linked to a post by Jane Hamsher that raises two interesting questions about abortion I’ve never thought about.

First, “if a fire breaks out in a fertility clinic, who do you save — a Petri dish with five blastula or the two year-old child?” If you believe that life begins at conception, is that a hard decision?

Second, knowing “that between 60 and 80 percent of all naturally conceived embryos are simply flushed out in a woman’s normal menstrual cycle in the first 7 days after fertilization,” how would you answer this dilemma:

If the embryo loss that accompanies natural procreation were the moral equivalent of infant death, then pregnancy would have to be regarded as a public health crisis of epidemic proportions: Alleviating natural embryo loss would be a more urgent moral cause than abortion, in vitro fertilization, and stem-cell research combined.

For the devout Christians reading, do they all go to heaven? As Hamsher asks, does that mean that 60-80% of the population in heaven are all blastocytes? It would probably be higher than 80%, as some percentage of the population won’t make it into heaven (all of us heathens, for example). Oh, actually, they have yet to be baptized, so do they all go to hell?

I’m being silly with the last paragraph, of course, but it gets at a serious concern: Do people consider the implications when considering these ethical questions? It often doesn’t seem that way. When I say that these moral decisions are deeply personal and difficult, it’s not because I don’t want to argue the affirmative case for abortion. It’s that I look at the wide array of ethical and moral issues and recognize that different people, even of the same faith, can honestly and truthfully come to different moral conclusions. It is part of recognizing and respecting the faith, morality, and beliefs of those around us. On this particular question, one that depends nearly 100% on morality alone, I don’t have the answer for you. No one can, and no one should try to answer it for me.

People will try to answer it for all of us, though. South Dakota just passed a new abortion law that will set up the perfect test case to go to the new, Big Government Supreme Court of Roberts and Alito.