The hens I've met abandons most of their eggs, for most of the year. If the hen abandons the egg, it won't grow or hatch regardless of fertilization, so as long as you only take the abandoned eggs, a rooster makes no difference in the ethics of eating those eggs.

The difference is that what I've heard a flock usually does better and feels better with a rooster (this may be propaganda from Big Rooster), and if you don't interrupt the nesting process (I dont know the English word for it, when the hen lays on the eggs until they hatch?), you'll keep putting more of the birds into the world which may not be ethical according to the person.

So positives and negatives, but no difference in the abandoned eggs.

But is this a wild hen roaming free, or imprisoned?

You would have to be a life-begins-at-conception, anti-abortion kind of person, as well, for that.

It's not an impossible or unnatural combination, intellectually, but demographically speaking, being radical in two directions at once is rare.

A vegetarian would be fine with a backyard coop. Vegans might say that your chickens are kind of like slaves - they make stuff for you, and can't leave - and that's bad.

That's an interesting aspect that I hadn't considered. It brings the question of "does life begin at fertilization" into this.