A Fetus Is A Person

As many know I keep an eye out on views that differ from mine. I use it to keep myself appraised of any contrary evidence and queues me on possible cases where a critical look at evidence might be needed. And it is the reason I stumbled on the following video released by IlluminatiTV

The description attached to the video sums it up quite nicely:

Abortion was wrongfully affirmed by the Supreme Court’s ruling in Roe v. Wade circa 1973. But have you listened to the tapes from that trial? Could they hold the key to destroying what Molotov refers to as the “Abortion Industrial Complex”? Join Molotov as he explores the legal ramifications of “personhood”, Hungary’s “Constitution for the 21st Century” and much more…

Now the video he released is directly based on the texts you can find on the website Personhood USA. And it says the following on abortion:

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!

In essence what they are saying is that from the moment of conception someone is a person. Right after the egg and sperm fuse to form the first cell, called a zygote. This is a zygote, and it is not a person:

And of course this idea is yet again being promoted by a religious organisation as is stated on their about page:

Personhood USA desires to glorify Jesus Christ in a way that creates a
culture of life so that all innocent human lives are protected by love and
by law.

Personhood USA is a 501©(4) Christian ministry that welcomes those who believe in the God-given right to life.

But there are huge problems with the idea of giving a zygote the same full protection of the law as granted to a person. Just take for example IVF where multiple eggs are fertilized, and a few are implanted at the 6 to 8 cell stage. The ones that are viable and aren’t used are often destroyed. Before that embryos can already be lost during the selection process.

This can be just because they aren’t viable, which can happen. But what if they aren’t viable anymore because of an accident? As they are a person this would mean you are responsible for its ‘death’ and it needs to be investigated if it wasn’t preventable. Which then could result in jail time for the person, or persons, involved.

And what about the left over embryos? As they are persons you cannot ‘kill’ them or freeze them indefinitely. This could very well mean that you can only fertilize what you need at the time. Which makes IVF a lot more complicated, as it isn’t uncommon that multiple implantations are needed. Not to mention that each time you need to implant multiple embryos, as a lot do not survive this procedure. Does this mean we are sacrificing human lives for one or two babies?

This is already messy with just the IVF example, but in the real world it can turn ugly. Such a law can be very dangerous with spontaneous abortions where the body of a woman itself terminates a pregnancy. Which could be her fault if she did something that caused it, intentional or not. She might have been even unaware of the pregnancy at the time.

Or what about ectopic pregnancies? With an ectopic pregnancy the embryo lodges itself outside the uterus, this situation can be life threatening for the mother. Aborting the pregnancy is the only treatment we have to save the life of the mother. This raises some interesting legal questions is this, or isn’t, killing a person.

With just a few simple examples you can see that this is an incredibly bad idea to implement. And if it does get adopted it will create one hell of a legal mess.

Collin Maessen is the founder and editor of Real Skeptic and a proponent of scientific skepticism. For his content he uses the most up to date and best research as possible. Where necessary consulting or collaborating with scientists.