The History of equating human life with raw seaweed

What is a human person? It may seem like a pretty obvious question at first glance, but a quick look through history and at our contemporary culture shows there to be no agreement across the board. Why is the question pertinent? What’s the big deal? The big deal that we are concerned with here is rights. If you are a human person you have, to use the language of our founding fathers, “inalienable rights.” But over and over again, and sadly today as well, we see one group of people denying another group of people certain rights. Should we be surprised that their rationale is that the other group of “sub-people” does not have rights because they are not really human persons? No. Should we be upset about it? Yes.

So the question at hand is, “What is a human person?” and the follow up question is, “What sort of rights follow from being a person?” It is important that we do not look at the issue the other way around. If we start by saying, “Well, I think that you should be able to do such and such…” then we will simply define a person to be one that fits into our desired system of rights. But before we answer this question, let’s look at some of the ways people have been denied their identity as human persons in history, and the grounds for the degradation from humanity.
Slavery. Slaves in the United States, as well as other countries, were thought of as less than human. Why? Skin color. It was viewed that a certain pigment made you human; a lack of the right hue and you cannot ask to be respected, listened to, loved, understood, or judged fairly. In fact, you were just another persons property. Does that make you upset? I hope so.

Nazism. Jews, as well as other ethnic and religious groups were denied to be fully human. They did not embody what it took to have rights, freedom, or control over their own life. Their lives were not seen as human and thus had no value. Do you see something wrong here?
Margaret Sanger. She didn’t just hate babies, but the lower class, the uneducated, and non-Caucasian races. In the 1920’s, the poor were encouraged to sterilize themselves because it was believed that people were genetically determined. If you were poor, then your children are unavoidably going to face that same sub-human life. And who wants a bunch of less-than-human bodies walking around.

Do you see a connection between each of these views? What’s the problem here that obviously has not gone away? The human person is always reduced to something. Today it is how much money they have, that invisible number that floats next to your head. You know, that stuff that makes you feel important and helps you decide how much respect to give to another person. Oooh, he’s got a tie on, “Well hello sir!” Ew, he’s a bum, “Don’t make eye contact!”

In the 1990’s the Human Genome Project was underway. About ten years later it was completed. The goal? To completely understand what makes your body do the things you do. For many, it was the hope to take your DNA, put all the info on a floppy disk and carry in your pocket. Then you could take out your little map of yourself and say, “Here I am. This is my entire existence!” This view of reducing a human to his DNA fell short although it did persist for a while. Why? Because something doesn’t line up when you hear, “You’re a bunch of chromosomes. That’s all you are, just a genetic make-up.”

We have seen examples of people being reduced to a certain part of their humanity, whether their skin color, race, wealth, or genes. All of these discriminations still are rampant in our society today. But if it were only these, we would be much better off than the current state. We also think age, size, and worst of all consciousness, yes consciousness determine whether or not you are a human person.

Look at Hollywood. The glamorized, artificial, narcissistic lifestyle floods the media. You cannot see an ad that does not push sex in some way. What is the message? You have to be attractive to be important, to have worth, value, or deserve attention. You are too old, you are not worth while. Beauty before age?

What about size? Well, you are too small, too physically unformed to be a person. I mean, hey, you are dependent on another for your own existence. You’re life is expendable. Who am I talking about? The little human inside the womb. Where is the magic ferry dust that suddenly gives a baby rights when his geographic location changes from in the womb to outside of it? Forget about the fact that this particular human life began at conception. No doctor or scientist will deny that at conception a new organism, not a part of the mother’s body, has begun to exist. Yet, we are not sure if the fetus (which is latin for baby) is a life. Let’s not mention the fact that it is because we are approaching the problem backwards. That is, we don’t want it to be a life, we don’t want the unborn child to have rights. So we come up with a definition of life that excludes…whatever it is exactly that this fetus-ball-of-tissue-thing is. We know it’s not a human person! Never mind that he has a beating heart. Never mind that he can feel pain. Never mind that he squirms to get away from the sulfur used by abortionists to take his life!
What about consciousness? Again we have approached the problem upside down. We start with the fact that we no longer want these ICU patients burdening us with their lives that drag on. So we make a definition of human life that excludes them. I can picture this whole thing unfolding: “Umm…let’s see...you are human if can no longer play horseshoes…no, if can no longer read Margaret Sanger pamphlets…no, if you’re conscious. Yea! That’s it! You have to be conscious to really be a human with rights!” What about sleeping? If you can unplug Terri Shaivo’s feeding tube so she starves to death, then you can shoot me in the head during my power nap. There is no difference.

Well then, if you are not your skin color, age, wealth, health, size, characteristics, consciousness, or even a composite of all these features, what exactly are you? What makes a person and if there are any rights that go with being human, when do they begin and when do they end?
Human life begins at conception, the moment when the sperm fertilizes the egg, and it ends when the cardio-pulmonary system permanently ceases to function. And what is the basis of rights? Life is intrinsically valuable. There is worth tied into each human being that no one can give or take away. This value can be acknowledged or denied, but it’s presence begins at conception and ends at death because the very presence of the human person is itself valuable.
It is sad that we have to argue for this view that was obvious those who wrote our Constitution. Our founding fathers did not argue for the existence of human dignity based on the enacting of some power of the body. The words, “We find these truths to be self-evident…” might come as a shock to many today, “…that all men were created equal…” Equal, what does that mean? What does this equal starting ground afford you as a person? “…and have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness…” To have life is to have worth, not because your parents, your government, or even you decide there is something valuable here. But life in itself is undeniably valuable. We should dwell on the word inalienable rights. Abortion and Euthanasia advocates must hate that word. The whole point of these life-ending tasks is to alienate the human, who is being killed, from their natural rights. Abortion and euthanasia in effect say, “We have decided that your life is not valuable. You no longer have any rights and your life is in the hands of others to decide what will be done with it. Just as slaves, Jews, and the poor have experienced in the past, so too, the unborn are denied status as human person because they do not meet the latest qualifications.

Human babies have no right to life, but dogs and trees do? More on this perversion next.