You're still thinking in binary terms. Zero or non-zero is a distinction that can be made arbitrarily useless.

If someone said that they wanted everyone in the world to have shoes, you would not assume that they also wanted people with no feet to have shoes. If a bacteria qualitatively lacks the feelings that are necessary for you to feel compassion for them, you assume they are not included.

If the universe were colonized by nothing but bacteria, I would not sterilize it, even if that bacteria could never evolve into anything else.