… It is so clear that someone only questions the personhood of a human she wishes to harm. It’s not a logical debate, it’s a way to justify homicide.
~Commenter Lauren, Stanek post “Human life begins with personhood,” May 30
[Photo of 8 week fetus by Lennart Nilsson, 1965]
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Jill Stanek is a nurse turned speaker, columnist and blogger, a national figure in the effort to protect both preborn and postborn innocent human life.
Thanks, Jill!
I would love for a pro-choicer to point out a single instance where stripping a human of “personhood” was not used to also strip him of human rights.
I’m becoming more and more angry at the comparisons of abortion to slavery.
Pregnant female slaves were often tossed into the ocean to be eaten by sharks. These slaves were most commonly impregnated by their captors after being washed, shaved, and groomed in front of hundreds of people. If they were visibly pregnant before being put on a ship, they were kept around, and after they had the child, they were put right back in the dungeon with hundreds of other Women. I feel like standing around on vomit, urine, and feces may not have been the best place for a Woman who just gave birth, but I could be wrong. (that was sarcasm!)
Perhaps those of you making this comparison might consider visiting a slave castle. I hope it might make you less flippant in your comparisons. Appalling, to say the least.
To thwart a forthcoming question: NO, I do not consider a fetus under the gestational age of 6 months equivalent to a human being living outside of the womb. Period. I love children so much that I am working towards bringing family planning services* to coastal Ghanaian villages, so that mothers can make the choice of whether or not to have children that they are not capable of caring for. The government there is messed up, and while I’m also intent on working on changing that, I’m not Super Woman.
*READ: NOT ABORTION!!!! Rather, education on condom use, access to dermal implants, contraceptive shots, etc. I have been asked to help with this by citizens on the ground. I was also offered a baby- to purchase- so again, the slave reference infuriates me.
What an interesting, informative and irrelevant 1st paragraph, Ashtar!
Slaves were not considered persons. Neither are the preborn.
Ashtar, you said a lot to avoid saying anything about the actual question.
Do you deny that people claimed that slaves were “not people” in order to take away their human rights?
those women in Ghana need food and water for themselves and their families, NOT contraception, which can cause problems for them.
they could be taught Natural Family Planning which would allow them to space children and which has no side effects, unlike the pill and the shots.
Sounds like something Sanger would do.
Ashtar, I hope you are as committed to protecting women by encouraging good moral values among the entire society as you are to handing out condoms and pushing powerful chemicals that treat normal female fertility like a disease. Have you considered that by making pregnancy a less likely result of sex outside of marriage (and thus making sex outside of marriage more likely), you are helping men who want to treat women as sexual playthings? By promoting contraception, you are an ally (whether you want to be or not) to men who want nothing more than to make women their sexual playthings. It makes women more vulnerable to the sort of men who easily lie, saying they love the women, when all they want is sex.
You would do much more to help women by working to reduce rape, sex outside of marriage, and all forms of sexual immorality. Promoting contraception does nothing to address the real underlying issues of the sexual abuse of women in society. I hope you don’t also push the “morning after” pill. This pill is a rapist’s best friend.
I love children so much that… I have them.
Ashtar, please consider things from the perspective of a pro-lifer. From the point of view of a pro-lifer, who considers a baby in the womb to be a person (truly) every bit as much as the living thing in the womb is a human being, how is the physical ripping apart of the unborn child’s body somehow not worth being upset about?
You don’t believe the unborn child is a person. But please don’t be so superior as to imply that someone who indeed does see the unborn child as a person, should somehow be less incensed by the arbitrary destruction of that life as they should be about the arbitrary and inhuman destruction of the life of a slave. All human beings (and all persons) have equal rights to life. No category or type (or age) of person has any less right to the safeguarding and protection of their life than any other. And so from the pro-life point of view, the slave, and the baby in the womb, have equal rights. And the complete and utter lack of regard for their lives is equally despicable. You don’t have to agree, but if you are reasonable, you have to admit that in seeing things this way, pro-lifers are consistent in their equal regard for all human life.
The point of connecting abortion with slavery is exactly what has been said:
In both cases the human beings in question have their personhood (humanity) questioned for the advancement of that side’s agenda.
The slaves were considered not really having personhood (not truly human) so it was considered okay to have them as slaves for that reason.
The pre-born human being is considered not really a person (not truly human) therefore, the pro-choice/pro-abort side considers it okay to abort (end) the life (although since the pro-choice/pro-abort side doesn’t recognize the life, they don’t recognize the end of said life).
History shows so many instances of one type of human being deciding another type isn’t truly human or isn’t truly alive or doesn’t have personhood, therefore whatever treatment of the “sub-human” being is justified by the others. Abortion is another example of that same mindset.
I once read a statistic (years ago, before the interwebs) that over 20% of slaves died during the passage.
So, I guess the abortion fans must be right. We can’t compare abortion to slavery because abortion kills far, far more than 20% of our children. Slaves had a better chance at reaching adulthood than your average American embryo (which is a human being!).
In fact, if 80% of mothers leaving Planned Parenthood were still pregnant, that would be stupendous and awesome.
Ashtar, here’s a chance to prove that you’re actually a thoughtful dialogue partner, and not just a knee-jerk sprayer of histrionics. Can you understand, especially after it’s been repeated to you ad nauseam, that any sane, well-informed person should be just as outraged over the dismemberment (or burning, etc.) deaths of pre-born children as they are at the brutality inflicted on slaves?
Are you somehow under the misapprehension that pro-lifers don’t care about the brutalization of slaves? Unless you’re thinking something along the absurd lines of, “I think pre-born children are irrelevant, and pro-lifers compare their deaths to slavery, so pro-lifers must think slavery (and the attendant brutality) is irrelevant”, then I really fail to see how you can miss the point, here. We compare the brutalization of the unborn to the brutalization of slaves because they’re virtually identical in their inhumanity of man to fellow man. We hate them BOTH.
(*sputter*) Do we have to put this on a billboard, or something, in order to get that to register?
Many pro-choice people say no contraception leads to men treating women as breeders, but as Scott Johnston pointed out, contraception can lead to men treating women as sex playthings with no consequences.
Also, to add to the comments here, contraceptive methods and condoms have only proven to have a failure rate that has increased the number of abortions (sometimes doubling or more per year) rather than decrease them since Roe V. Wade. Here’s some simple stats on failure rates, etc. from abort73.com (very resourceful and informative site).
-54% of women having abortions used a contraceptive method during the month they became pregnant. Among those women, 76% of pill users and 49% of condom users reported using the methods inconsistently, while 13% of pill users and 14% of condom users reported correct use (AGI).
-8% of women having abortions have never used a method of birth control (AGI).
-9 in 10 women at risk of unintended pregnancy are using a contraceptive method (AGI).
There are also other stats like such that express how sex education has also only increased the number of abortions as well. So far, sexual education and contraceptive methods have done little to reduce abortions.
Funny, but it was in the best interest of slave owners to keep their human chattel alive so they could do what, well, slaves do–sacrifice their physical and emotional well-being for others. So right there your analogy falls a little flat, no? I think a more fitting comparison to slavery would be what y’all intend to do: dictate that women should give up their bodies to developing human beings.
Hi Megan!!
Slaves were not considered human beings. Neither are the preborn.
Paladin,
Order the billboard already!!
Bleating of sheep is all I hear: fetuses SLAVES fetuses SLAVES fetuses SLAVES. If you want to “liberate” embryos and fetuses, get some R&D company to design an artificial womb. Until then you’ll just have to deal with the pesky problem that women own their own bodies and what happens inside of them.
Slaves were not considered human beings. Neither are the preborn.
Actually, I believe slaves were “three-fifths” persons. Not quite people, but not quite non-people.
Kinda reminds me of the whole “potential life” argument.
Slaves: “potential persons. Maybe one day you’ll achieve the arbitrary criteria we’ve set for you to be considered full persons.”
Well, Megan, perhaps if you’re tired of hearing “bleating sheep,” you should reconsider coming to this blog. Just a thought to brighten your day. :)
Megan, the analogy is simply that there have been other groups of human beings who have been declared “non persons.”
It’s really pretty simple. Slaves, Jews, Gypsies, the mentally disabled, the physically disabled, infants, ect. ect. ect.
Every single one of these examples shares a common thread: The people who refused to recognize them as “people” did so because they wanted to strip them of their rights.
Odd… all *I* hear, some days, is the trip-trop of trolls under Jill’s bridge…
Megan said, “…women own their own bodies and what happens inside of them”
Ownership doesn’t give free license to what happens inside. I may own a house, but it would be wrong to kill someone inside of it. With authority of ownership comes responsibility.
Lauren,
None of those other people were living inside people’s bodies. LogicFail.
Eric,
Your house isn’t your body. LogicFailPartDeux.
Megan, Ashtar, et al – please read this blog post that I wrote:
Slavery, Abortion, and Abraham Lincoln
In it I show how eerily similar the arguments of the pro-slavery crowd are to that of the pro-abortion crowd. Perhaps it will help you understand this perspective a bit more.
Megan says “None of those other people were living inside people’s bodies. LogicFail.”
*head desk*
Mr. Nazi says “None of those other people were Jews! LogicFail!!”
Mr. Slaveowner says “None of those other people were black! LogicFail!”
Mr. Eugenics says “None of those other people were of inferior stock! LogicFail!”
Peter Singer says “None of those other people lacked self awareness! LogicFail!”
Megan, do you understand what an analogy is?
“I love children so much that I am working towards bringing family planning services* to coastal Ghanaian villages”
Don’t make me laugh! You love children so much that you do all you can to prevent people in Ghana having children???!!!! Where’s the logic in this??? If you love children so much, why don’t you get involved in trying to help children that are currently starving in Africa, or the ones that can’t afford an education or are in desperate need of medical care and clean water? Oh no… These are unimportant issues at all, the most important thing is to make people have LESS children, then all the problems will go away as by magic wand…
Megan, to tell a woman that she “owns” her own body is implying that it’s not soley hers at some point in her existence. Having been through pregnancy a few times, yep, I felt as if I didn’t “own” my body for the duration of the pregnancy and the length of time nursing afterwards.
Biggz says ” the intent behind those words are completely different.”
No, Biggz, the intent is exactly the same: To strip the individual of rights.
This is really not a hard concept, guys. Your arbitrary definition of “personhood” is birth. The slave owner’s arbitrary definition of personhood was “white skin.” The Nazi’s arbitrary definition of personhood was “not jewish.”
Allow me to demonstrate:
Mr. Nazi says “I see your point about Jews and slaves, but the difference is, you see, that slaves were clearly persons, while Jews can not be persons because they are Jews!”
All of the oppressors mentioned above define personhood in such a way that the humans they wish to dehumanize can not ever meet the standard. You are doing the exact same thing.
“This is really not a hard concept, guys. Your arbitrary definition of “personhood” is birth.”
It’s not “arbitrary”. It’s universal, completely obvious, and employed by virtually every society that has ever contemplated the concept of individual rights in a classical liberal sense, and whether reconciled in a positivist or natural law legal framework. The “unborn” are not being denied or stripped their personhood “rights” because they never had them in the first place. I think this push to bestow equal moral and legal status on in utero fetuses is what bothers me most about this anti-abortion movement. It’s one thing to argue that abortion is immoral from the standpoint that it is an act of cruelty to destroy a fetus before it has had the chance to be born; it’s an entirely novel line of reasoning to argue that they are people in every sense of the word that we understand it to mean and that abortion therefore violates their rights.
And what’s more, as I have pointed out a number of times, the internal logic used to justify this position does not match the rhetoric or the norms employed by the movement promoting it. Why, for example, would any consistent pro-life ethic that recognizes an absolute right to personhood for the unborn make an exception in the case of rape, or even for the life of the mother? If both mother and fetus have equal moral and legal status, then the life and wellbeing of one cannot reasonably be weighed more heavily than the life of the other under any circumstances. Plenty of other examples of an internal inconsistency in the logic of this position abound.
That’s simply hogwash, Joan. Until the legalization of abortion, most every statement of human rights included the preborn.
Right, I suppose it was an oversight that the Fourteenth Amendment guarantees legal protections for all persons born or naturalized in the United States and they actually meant to write “conceived or naturalized” instead.
Laws against abortion were strengthened concurrently with the ratification of the 14th amendment, Joan.
Joan in 1830 “It’s not arbitrary, slaves have never been considered persons!”
Regarding the quote of the day:
Congrats to Lauren for pointing that out so succinctly.
Where did Ashtar pull the six months gestation figure from? What is so magical at 24 weeks that the unborn suddenly become worth protecting? Can someone please explain that one to me?
Well, you see Sydney, at 24 weeks the child can be born and survive. At 23 weeks 6 days, they might not. And it’s worth killing some babies that will make it to get rid of those who won’t. Because if a baby is going to die anyway, it’s best to dismember them. And those babies who don’t die would have low quality of life. Low quality of life is so horrid it is worth killing children who are perfectly normal in order to avoid anyone having a low quality of life. This is why it is worth doing tests for Down Syndrome that will kill one of every 100 to 200 babies tested, regardless of their disability status. It is why we must kill children diagnosed in utero with Down Syndrome, even though sometimes the tests are wrong and the baby killed is normal. Just think how many more rapists and serial killers there would be if children with Down Syndrome were allowed to be born. Of course, born children with Down Syndrome deserve fair and equal treatment because they’re not in someone’s body.
But if a person is inside someone’s body, it’s okay to kill them, even if they could be safely removed.
After 24 weeks no one gets abortions anyway, Sydney. Unless they are in a really awful position. Like their baby is going to die anyway. How can you be so cruel and heartless as to tell a woman she has to give birth and watch her baby die, Sydney? Warm, compassionate people like Ashtar want to make sure that instead, they are knocked unconscious (unless, of course, they didn’t pay for that service), have their intimate parts forced open by medical instruments, and have their child dismembered piece by piece or stabbed in the back of the head, then left to deal with the aftermath of pain, bleeding, and mourning with guilt on top of it, never seeing that dying face or holding the baby close. Sydney, how can you deny women that compassionate level of care? Women who abort after 24 weeks are always suffering extremely unusual medical complications which require the immediate removal of the baby. It is very important when time is of the essence to pause during the procedure of removing the baby and kill it. Otherwise there might be some good coming out of the terrible situation of a high risk pregnancy, and nothing good ever comes of pregnancy. This is so important that rather than an emergency C-section, which can be performed in a half hour, it is usually necessary for a pregnant woman experiencing complications to fly out of state and undergo a lifesaving 3 day procedure to make sure she doesn’t end up with a son or daughter instead of a dead fetus. You don’t know how traumatic it is to think you’re going to get a dead fetus and end up with a daughter instead! You’re so anti-woman. And of course there are exceptions for rape and incest. If at 8 1/2 months you realized your husband was actually your long-lost brother, you’d want an option, right? And of course you would kill your born son too. Women who are raped are nearly always held hostage for the first 6 months of pregnancy by rapists whose main goal was to expand his family and pay child support for 18 years, so it only makes sense to allow abortion in the third trimester after rape. All women who have late abortions are in horrible situations like these, or else they can’t afford another child. So when Ashtar says that abortion after 24 weeks is something she doesn’t believe in, she means except when it happens, because women can be trusted to make a rational decision at all times which is best for themselves, their children, their husband, and basically everyone on the face of the earth. This is why men and children are never allowed to make decisions. Well, except a minor girl can choose abortion. But if she doesn’t want one, it’s okay for her mom to drag her kicking and screaming to the murder of her grandchild, helping hold her down during the safe, legal, moral procedure if necessary.
“…they are knocked unconscious, have their intimate parts forced open by medical instruments, and have their child dismembered piece by piece or stabbed in the back of the head, then left to deal with the aftermath of pain, bleeding, and mourning with guilt on top of it, never seeing that dying face or holding the baby close. …How can you deny women that compassionate level of care?”
Well said.
Did you stay up all night thinking of that comeback, Megan?
Typical pro-abort behavior… can’t defend the content so you attack the messenger.
JoAnna, ZING! lol.
Megan thinks she is so clever but she is just a bitter person. Her poison seeps across the internet like a plague. Sad.
Why are you here Megan? Really?
Megan said, “…women own their own bodies and what happens inside of them”
Eric: “Ownership doesn’t give free license to what happens inside. I may own a house, but it would be wrong to kill someone inside of it. With authority of ownership comes responsibility.”
Reminds me of, “With Mogwai comes much responsibility…” : P
But you know, maybe it would be wrong to kill somebody in your house, and maybe it wouldn’t be – it depends on the situation.
Lauren: I would love for a pro-choicer to point out a single instance where stripping a human of “personhood” was not used to also strip him of human rights.
It’s the same thing. Personhood is an attributed status. It’s saying that rights have been accorded, that “full legal human being” applies.
Not “attributed”, Doug. Neither is it “accorded”. The word is ENDOWED, and it’s not by Doug, the political party holding office or the latest poll. It’s ENDOWED BY THEIR CREATOR. Inherent to being human, period. The rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are self-evident. I’ve been over this before and the only response I’ve gotten (when not entirely ignored) is, “You know that’s the DOI, right?” Meanwhile I continue to read your semantic tap-dancing around justifying killing a certain class of human beings.
Lauren is right in her assertion that historically, this is the way to commit genocide. I’ve often thought about what it reveals about humankind that we feel a need to make atrocities “legal” first, as though that will fly as an excuse when we face the Judge who is Just.
JoAnna,
I’ve provided plenty of thought-out responses. What did YCW contribute but a long, rather incoherent satire sprinkled with nasty value judgments and bizarre-o prolife fantasies about the “horrors” of abortion?
Klynn,
Sure. And as a person endowed with rights, I can’t take up residence inside someone else’s body and still expect to have the same legal protection. The other person’s rights would supersede mine.
Sydney,
I’m absolutely bitter, and why not? Lawmakers in my state have been trying for years to make relegate pregnant women to a separate legal category. You want to talk about “redefining personhood”?
Ashtar: “To thwart a forthcoming question: NO, I do not consider a fetus under the gestational age of 6 months equivalent to a human being living outside of the womb.”
Huhkay.
Just so you know, though, a human being’s life begins at the moment of fertilization, so your “I do not consider a fetus” thing runs counter to scientific fact.
And it appears that I need to explain to Joan (again) how the 14th Amendment cannot cogently be used to deny anyone’s personhood. First, it relates to who is a citizen, not who is a human being. A Canadian visiting New York City is not a citizen here, and yet we are not permitted to kill her. Second, as any student of logic knows, the inverse of a statement is not necessarily true. Statement: “Every resident of Detroit is a resident of the state of Michigan.” TRUE. Inverse: “Every resident of the state of Michigan is a resident of Detoit.” FALSE. Likewise, the 14th Amendment never says anything, yea or nay, about unborn persons. Third, a legal document does not trump scientific fact.
bizarre-o prolife fantasies about the “horrors” of abortion?
Megan, perhaps you’d care to describe what abortion does to a preborn human being in less fantastical, yet highly accurate terms for us?
klynn73: Not “attributed”, Doug. Neither is it “accorded”. The word is ENDOWED, and it’s not by Doug, the political party holding office or the latest poll. It’s ENDOWED BY THEIR CREATOR. Inherent to being human, period. The rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are self-evident. I’ve been over this before and the only response I’ve gotten (when not entirely ignored) is, “You know that’s the DOI, right?” Meanwhile I continue to read your semantic tap-dancing around justifying killing a certain class of human beings.
Lauren is right in her assertion that historically, this is the way to commit genocide.
Yeah, the DOI, but that has no force of law, was really aimed at telling King George to quite messing with us, and it did say “men,” and in practice such thinking was only truly applied to white, male landowners.
Moreover, abortion was legal back then, to a point in gestation, and the writers certainly knew that. It’s not that personhood “has been taken” from the unborn, it’s never been attributed. The legality or illegality of abortion has no necessary bearing on that. I don’t think any society, anywhere on earth, has actually ever deemed true personhood to be there on the part of the unborn.
Look – what you want is for us to treat the unborn differently. You want different status to be attributed to them.
I can see Lauren’s point – if the desire is to single out a group and kill them, then obviously unless they’re already going against society to the extent that there’s a relative lack of sentiment against killing them, changing the law and perception about them would go toward that end, as with the Nazis and the Jews. Quite a bit different than abortion, as it’s not that the current law is an attempt to “kill the unborn” like that. And, the Jews had previously had full rights, another difference versus the abortion issue.
Doug said, “But you know, maybe it would be wrong to kill somebody in your house, and maybe it wouldn’t be – it depends on the situation.”
Exactly, thanks Doug. Ownership alone doesn’t justify what happens inside, which is what was being argued. The situation of whether or not it would be wrong to kill someone isn’t strictly ownership. Most states require some form of malicious intent by the non-owner as justification for the owner to kill him/her. In the abortion analogy, it is hard to imagine a non-person having “intent”.
bmmg39: And it appears that I need to explain to Joan (again) how the 14th Amendment cannot cogently be used to deny anyone’s personhood. First, it relates to who is a citizen, not who is a human being. A Canadian visiting New York City is not a citizen here, and yet we are not permitted to kill her. Second, as any student of logic knows, the inverse of a statement is not necessarily true. Statement: “Every resident of Detroit is a resident of the state of Michigan.” TRUE. Inverse: “Every resident of the state of Michigan is a resident of Detoit.” FALSE. Likewise, the 14th Amendment never says anything, yea or nay, about unborn persons. Third, a legal document does not trump scientific fact.
Joan wasn’t trying to “deny anyone’s personhood.” Your Canadian can come and have an abortion, up to when the state restrictions kick in. You’re certainly right about switching a statement around and having it not necessarily be logically true, anymore, but it’s not “scientific fact” that’s being argued. Science does not pronounce on personhood nor upon morality.
The situation of whether or not it would be wrong to kill someone isn’t strictly ownership. Most states require some form of malicious intent by the non-owner as justification for the owner to kill him/her. In the abortion analogy, it is hard to imagine a non-person having “intent”.
Eric, yes – quite reasonable and you’re right, in that case home ownership isn’t a game-changer as are our conceptions of personal autonomy and liberty. Agreed also – can’t say that any intent is there on the part of the unborn, and there’s no capacity for guilt, anyway.
Doug wrote:
Joan wasn’t trying to “deny anyone’s personhood.” Your Canadian can come and have an abortion, up to when the state restrictions kick in.
Er… Doug… I really suspect that you know that wasn’t what bmmg39 meant, right? If you’re merely trying to be cute, then okay… full points for cuteness; but otherwise, it’s an illicit “bait-and-switch”. Bmmg39 pointed out (quite clearly and skillfully) that Joan completely missed the point re: right to life, the 14th amendment, and USA citizenship (which Joan claimed was the basis for legal protection of one’s life in the USA… which is absurd). That was the only point. Your attempt to “shoehorn” abortion into the equation was a complete non-sequitur, and it came across as downright disingenuous.
You’re certainly right about switching a statement around and having it not necessarily be logically true, anymore, but it’s not “scientific fact” that’s being argued. Science does not pronounce on personhood nor upon morality.
Logic (which is the guiding principle of what I think you mean by “science”), however, does pronounce on the impossibility of a contradiction’s validity, and it’s quite capable of pointing out an inconsistency in current law. For example: a Canadian citizen–or even a hypothetical expatriated person with no citizenship in any country at all–has his or her life protected by USA laws; no one can simply slit his or her throat at will… agreed? If so, then citizenship is not the sine qua non of one’s right to life, even under USA civil law, and it’s therefore ridiculous to talk of “non-citizenship of pre-born children legitimizing one’s legal ‘right’ to kill them at will”. This is an area where USA law has adopted a radical inconsistency: the protection of all persons, regardless of citizenship (*ahem*, Joan…), along with the “freedom” to kill unborn children at will, for the most spurious of reasons, simply because a sufficiently large number of people who happened to be in positions of power wanted that “right”. Logic really had nothing to do with the decision to decriminalize abortion, Doug… and “science” (by which you mean the empirical sciences, right? Physics, chemistry, biology, and the like? Because ethics (the systematic study of morality and right behaviour), and philosophy/ontology (the study of reality and being) are sciences, you know…) does not canonize it.
Doug: Joan wasn’t trying to “deny anyone’s personhood.” Your Canadian can come and have an abortion, up to when the state restrictions kick in.
Paladin: Er… Doug… I really suspect that you know that wasn’t what bmmg39 meant, right? If you’re merely trying to be cute, then okay… full points for cuteness; but otherwise, it’s an illicit “bait-and-switch”. Bmmg39 pointed out (quite clearly and skillfully) that Joan completely missed the point re: right to life, the 14th amendment, and USA citizenship (which Joan claimed was the basis for legal protection of one’s life in the USA… which is absurd). That was the only point. Your attempt to “shoehorn” abortion into the equation was a complete non-sequitur, and it came across as downright disingenuous.
Hey Paladin. You know, I figured somebody would look at it that way. Yeah – there was indeed sort of a “switching” at work. However, bmmg was wrong in the first place about “trying to deny anybody’s personhood.” So, I just went ahead and wrote some stuff. Bmmg was who jumped the track… Indeed, citizenship is not the only protection that the Constitution notes. It’s still erroneous to pretend that the Constitution applies to the unborn. The point stands – Joan was not “trying to deny anyones’ personhood.”
_____
“You’re certainly right about switching a statement around and having it not necessarily be logically true, anymore, but it’s not “scientific fact” that’s being argued. Science does not pronounce on personhood nor upon morality.”
Logic (which is the guiding principle of what I think you mean by “science”), however, does pronounce on the impossibility of a contradiction’s validity, and it’s quite capable of pointing out an inconsistency in current law. For example: a Canadian citizen–or even a hypothetical expatriated person with no citizenship in any country at all–has his or her life protected by USA laws; no one can simply slit his or her throat at will… agreed? If so, then citizenship is not the sine qua non of one’s right to life, even under USA civil law, and it’s therefore ridiculous to talk of “non-citizenship of pre-born children legitimizing one’s legal ‘right’ to kill them at will”. This is an area where USA law has adopted a radical inconsistency: the protection of all persons, regardless of citizenship (*ahem*, Joan…), along with the “freedom” to kill unborn children at will, for the most spurious of reasons, simply because a sufficiently large number of people who happened to be in positions of power wanted that “right”. Logic really had nothing to do with the decision to decriminalize abortion, Doug… and “science” (by which you mean the empirical sciences, right? Physics, chemistry, biology, and the like? Because ethics (the systematic study of morality and right behaviour), and philosophy/ontology (the study of reality and being) are sciences, you know…) does not canonize it.
You’re confusing abortion being illegal with personhood having been attributed to them. Not the same deal.
If you reply, I’ll try to answer – but my wife and I are leaving for Italy and France for 4 weeks tomorrow, so may not…
Paladin: If so, then citizenship is not the sine qua non of one’s right to life, even under USA civil law, and it’s therefore ridiculous to talk of “non-citizenship of pre-born children legitimizing one’s legal ‘right’ to kill them at will”.
You realize that right-to-life is not just dependent on citizenship, yes. Aside from all the blunders people are making, above – I won’t bother with them. Again – citizenship, as you seem to note, is not the same thing as personhood. I don’t know if you’re actually quoting somebody, above, with the “non-citizenship…”, but if anybody actually said that “only citizens have the right to life in the US,” then they are wrong.
However, that does not necessarily include the unborn.
Doug,
Feel free to reply when you get back; have a safe trip, anyway!
You wrote:
It’s still erroneous to pretend that the Constitution applies to the unborn.
Can you explain how you come to that conclusion?
You’re confusing abortion being illegal with personhood having been attributed to them. Not the same deal.
I can only wonder, when you say that! Are you suggesting that you’d find it acceptable to kill innocent, non-aggressor humans who are recognized under law as “persons”, simply because someone (the mother, or, more likely, the boyfriend, coercive family, abortionist, etc.) doesn’t care to have them around and alive, i.e. that the child’s life is considered “burdensome and/or inconvenient”? Normally, personhood (even in the strictly legal-recognition sense) carries with it an esteem for, and a duty to safeguard, the life of that person, yes?
You realize that right-to-life is not just dependent on citizenship, yes. Aside from all the blunders people are making, above – I won’t bother with them. Again – citizenship, as you seem to note, is not the same thing as personhood. I don’t know if you’re actually quoting somebody, above, with the “non-citizenship…”, but if anybody actually said that “only citizens have the right to life in the US,” then they are wrong.
Lauren (correctly) wrote, above: “That’s simply hogwash, Joan. Until the legalization of abortion, most every statement of human rights included the preborn.”
… to which Joan wrote, in direct reply and immediately afterward: “Right, I suppose it was an oversight that the Fourteenth Amendment guarantees legal protections for all persons born or naturalized in the United States and they actually meant to write “conceived or naturalized” instead.”
So… you be the judge. Was Joan merely offering a random non-sequitur that had nothing at all to do with the topic to which she was replying, or did she think that her “14th amendment = protections only for born or naturalized in the USA” had some direct connection to Lauren’s comments about “statements of human rights including the unborn”? If the former, then… well and good; Joan temporarily lost track of the logical flow of the conversation (it happens to us all, on occasion). If the latter, then her quote certainly seems to fall under your indictment of “being wrong”… and it was the main quote that I had in mind, when writing my own reply.
However, that does not necessarily include the unborn.
Can you explain why you think so? And could you clarify what you mean by “THAT” (i.e. “that” does not necessarily include the unborn)? I’d like to be quite clear, so as not to assume wrongly and waste time following a false trail.
If personhood begins at birth, then it is ok to destroy a fetus that is about ready to be born. One second before birth=non-person. One second after birth=person. Up until recently, even if the birth process was started, but the head had not been birthed, then “it” was a non-person and could be destroyed.
joan said:”Why, for example, would any consistent pro-life ethic that recognizes an absolute right to personhood for the unborn make an exception in the case of rape, or even for the life of the mother?”
Excellent point joan! The answer is that any consistent person would not make any of those exceptions. That has always been the position of the Roman Catholic Church. If the mother will die by giving birth, then at least she has had the chance to choose Jesus as her savior. The unborn baby has not had that chance & should be afforded that chance.