Menewsha Avatar Community - Personhood and the Right to Bear

Okay, just a note to start this off: This isn't a pro-life/pro-choice debate thread. There's already one of those. I can see where it might come into the conversation at some point, but please don't make it the main focus, kthnx~

There is a thread on Solia called Pregnancy Support, and as I was reading through it one day I came across the following section entitled Personhood USA: Need to back off my Preggos. I am going to quote pretty much all of it. The first part of this comes from the PersonhoodUSA website:

Quote:

"What is personhood?

When the term “Person” is granted to a human being, it refers to the presence of a particular set of characteristics that grant that individual certain rights such as the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. In other words, to be a person is to be protected by a series of God given and constitutionally protected rights.

This terrifies the pro-abortion foes!!!
They know that if we clearly define the pre-born baby as a person then they will have the same right to life as all Americans do! This Amendment has the promise plugging the “Blackmun Hole,” a startling admission that if personhood could be established for the pre-born, the arguments in Roe would collapse.

Justice Harry Blackmun wrote in the majority opinion for Roe v. Wade in 1973, “The appellee and certain amici [pro-lifers] argue that the fetus is a ‘person’ within the language and meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment. In support of this, they outline at length and in detail the well-known facts of fetal development. If this suggestion of personhood is established, the appellant’s case, of course, collapses, for the fetus’ right to life would then be guaranteed specifically by the Amendment.”

During Blackmun’s time, the “well-known facts of fetal development” were a far cry from what is known today. Ultrasonography and DNA testing were yet to be invented. In 1973, most held that “life” began at “quickening,” or when a woman first feels movement of the baby in the womb at 18 to 24 weeks. Some even held to the “Recapitulation Theory,” the scientifically debunked notion that the human baby underwent his entire evolutionary cycle in the womb, being first a simple one-celled creature, then later a fish, then later a mammal, then finally a human, which of course now seems absurd.

The science of fetology in 1973 was not able to prove, as it can now, that a fully human and unique individual exists at the moment of fertilization and continues to grow through various stages of development in a continuum (barring tragedy) until natural death from old age.

If the Court considers the humanity of the pre-born child, for which there is overwhelming scientific evidence, it could restore the legal protections of person-hood to the pre-born under the 14th Amendment as Blackmun foretold, stopping abortion in a few and then in all fifty states!

There are essentially two issues which must be resolved concerning unborn embryos and fetuses. The first is, "Are they human beings?" The second is, "Should they be recognized as persons under the law?" We've already established that there is no debate on the first question. It is a matter of plain, objective science. Embryos and fetuses are fully and individually human from the moment of fertilization on. If this were not true, if unborn children were not demonstrably human, there would be no need to even talk about rights of personhood. "Removing a fetus" would be the moral equivalent of pulling a tooth. This, however, is not the case, and so the debate must now enter the political arena.

There is a very real sense in which the need to answer this second question is, in itself, an absurdity. If you look up the word "person" in your average dictionary (we'll use Webster's), you'll find something like this:

Person n. A human being.

A person, simply put, is a human being. This fact should be enough. The intrinsic humanity of unborn children, by definition, makes them persons and should, therefore, guarantee their protection under the law. For more than thirty years, however, this has not been the case. The situation we are left with is this. In America today, there is a huge and singular group of living human beings who have no protection under the law and are being killed en masse every day. Is that not astounding?! It is astounding, but not wholly unprecedented.

There have been at least two other instances in American history in which specific groups of human beings were stripped of their rights of personhood as a means of justifying their horrible mistreatment. African-Americans and Native-Americans both felt the brunt of a system which denied their humanity, stripped their personhood and subjected them to horrors beyond measure. While the legal framework that made such injustice possible has now been removed, it remains firmly in place for unborn Americans.

There remains one, and only one, group of human beings in the U.S. today for which being human is not enough. The inconvenience of their existence has resulted in a legal loophole of shameful proportions. What is a person? A person is a human being (unless, of course, you haven't been born yet, in which case we'll define personhood in any way possible so as to exclude you, kill you and forget you)."

Okay, fine. Seems nice enough, yes? Well, the next thing in the thread is a link to this video:

Thusly personhood laws can take away the mother's rights:

Quote:

They have the right to chain down a pregnant woman and force a c-section on her against her will.
They have the right to charge a woman with MURDER if she has a STILLBORN child. How is this even right?
They have the right to charge a woman with MURDER if she has an abortion! This is insanity!
They have the right to let the mother die if the fetus will live, again...against the mother's will.
They have the right to not allow you to have a home birth.
They say we no longer have the rights to medical decisions once we conceive.

So here is the debate to be had here: When is a human being a human being? Should the rights of an unborn fetus trump the rights of the mother, and if so, why? Should the "law" be allowed to force a woman to go through a life threatening procedure without her consent?

Oh, and just for some more food for thought, I'd like to put in yet another issue: invetro and freezing of embryos. I was reading the Dalai Lama's book How to Practice and there is a section involving when life comes into being. According to various Buddhist texts, a human is a human at the moment of conception. This is a stance taken by various other religious groups as well. So what is happening with those full persons when they are stuck in a freezer, or when they are discarded as unusable?

- - -

Personally, I'm not sure when a human becomes a human. I'm hard pressed to think that it happens at the moment of conception. When Mama's cell and Papa's cell become a zygote, you're still not much better off than an ameoba, even if you do have better prospects. On the other hand, I can see karma being attached to the tiny embryo, which means there much be something human in it, right?

Hmm...

Though as to personhood laws, I don't really think that's much of the issue. I can understand giving fetuses certain rights (though I am pro-choice, so this is mostly hypothetical), but I cannot understand, nor will I accept, that the rights of that unborn child should in any way trump the rights of the mother who is carrying him or her. A carrying mother is still a human being, too, no?