Caro Biagio,
uno scienziato americano, Clifford Pickover, sul prorio sito mantiene una probabile (o improbabile, secondo alcune opinioni espresse sul suo stesso sito) top ten delle persone più malvagie nella storia dell’umanità; la stessa pagina riporta anche la sua personale classifica delle persone più buone e giuste e al 10° posto c’è Carl Djerassi, inventore della pillola anticoncezionale. Pickover prova così a spiegare i benefici derivanti da questa invenzione:
Because millions of unwanted children were not produced, countless suffering has been abolished (including decreases in crime, child abuse, and ecological nightmares). With women gaining more control over their reproductive fate, society has changed. Reliable birth control became as easy as taking a pill, which some call the single greatest factor in helping women achieve equality. Although religious people may debate whether a fertilized egg (zygote) should be accorded the same rights as a child (and therefore the pill is evil), no one debates that the pill has decreased the suffering of fully formed, multicellular humans.

A proposito invece dell’embrione come visto dalla chiesa, lo scienziato evidenzia un dato di fatto che mi sembra di gran lunga più valido di qualunque speculazione filosofica:

Note that “zygotic personhood” (the idea that a fertilized egg is a person) is a recent concept. For example, before 1869, the Catholic church believed that the embryo was not a person until it was 40 days old. (Aristotle agreed with this 40-day threshold.) Thus, the church did not believe a human had a soul until day 40. Pope Innocent III in 1211 determined that the time of ensoulment was anywhere from 12 to 16 weeks. This means that the Catholic church, for centuries, did not equate abortion with murder.

Dico bene?