If you ponder whether these things have souls, then they're directly related.
There's a spectrum here.
At one end, religious folks believe life and soul begins at conception. Some also believe tampering with genes is tampering with god's creation.
At the other end, atheists believe in so soul.
Some believe personhood doesn't begin until a being is able to think, feel, and reflect upon the world around it. They hold that cetaceans have higher consciousness than human babies. They wouldn't have issue with this.
Plenty of people with no monotheistic belief feel nature shouldn't be tampered with.
Many scientists view biology as a machine that should be probed and studied.
The "choice" argument is one of the counter arguments used by those that are pro-life. I think many of them would object to these experiments on different grounds.
The ethics are complicated and messy. The science is rather straightforward.