Personhood

Yesterday "Ken" dropped by to offer a comment to this post. His comment was as follows:

You clowns act as if an embryo has all the attributes of a person. I know it may be too subtle a point for such pointy heads as yourselves but whatever personhood means for an embryo does not supercede personhood for the rest of us. In fact it means less.

Hear ye, hear ye: if you're going to come to this blog and try to argue the abortion issue, you better come with more substance that Ken does.

Fact: the embryo is a human being. It is a member of the human species, a living, self-directed, integrated homo sapien, just like neonate, adolescent, and adult human beings. That's an embryological, biological, scientific fact.

Now, if you assert that embryos do not possess the same rights that other homo sapiens possess, you are thereby asserting that some human beings have rights and others do not. Now, that's already a precarious situation to find yourself in... there have been plenty of folks throughout human history who have said that some human beings are not equal in dignity and possession of rights to other human beings, but they're generally not the kind of people one likes to be identified with (I trust I don't need to specify whom I'm talking about). Better, I say, to stay with the view that says all men and women are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, among them life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

If, though, you continue to assert that some human beings do not have rights, I want to know what the basis of your assertion is. Unfortunately, when it comes to embryonic human beings, the only things assertable are lack of physiological development and size. In other words, smaller, less developed human beings are not worthy of protection under the law. Is that the kind of view you want to be associated with? How is size more relevant to rights than, say, religion, culture, or skin color?

So go ahead... refuse to recognize the rights of some human beings. Then look around and see the historical company you're keeping. I'd rather side with those who recognize the value of every human being.