embryo during the first two or three weeks after fertilization. They respect it as nascent human life, but believe that it does not require all the protections given to an individual human being. For a serious reason, for example, the prevention of pregnancy due to rape, the early embryo could be deprived of the environment it would need for continued development. Dr. DeCicco and the administrator have the obligation to become familiar with this theological literature in order to inform their own moral judgments. Another point for them to consider is the phrase equivalent. In what sense is use of the morning-after pill morally equivalent to a sixth-month abortion? We may say that the energy crisis is the moral equivalent of war, and that chain smoking is the moral equivalent of suicide. Such expressions are at least partly figurative, and to take them literally leads to This factual case study is one of a series demonstrating ethical dilemmas in medicine and the life sciences. The series Case Studies in Bio-