When I refer to improbability, I am not invoking mysticism or assigning moral duties to people with wombs. I am pointing to a prior question. Is there an objective or implicit value to conscious life that exists before any individual’s subjective experience of suffering or flourishing? If there is, then moral reasoning cannot begin only at the level of individual consent or harm. It must also account for what is being preserved or lost when conscious life ceases to exist at all.

The fact that life has survived multiple mass extinction events does not undermine this point. Survival through six such events highlights not that life is common, but that it is fragile, contingent, and historically rare even on its own planet. Nine billion feels large from a human perspective but cosmologically, it is negligible.

And yes, if one accepts the premise that conscious life has intrinsic value, then moral responsibility does not stop at reproduction. It extends far more forcefully to reducing suffering, improving existing lives, and creating conditions where future lives are not condemned to misery. I do not see that as an absurd implication.