Concede the Humanity, Withdraw the Protection

The modern abortion debate asks when “personhood” begins. It offers a shifting list of qualifications: rationality, self-awareness, viability, independence, the capacity to suffer, being wanted. Every one of these has been proposed in earnest. Every one excludes somebody.

That is not an accident. It is the function of the word. “Person” is a philosophical and legal category, defined and redefined by whoever holds the power to define it. And history shows what that power has done.

The move, in older clothes

State the history accurately, not for effect. Great crimes have repeatedly been carried out by men who granted that their victims were human and then withdrew their protection anyway.

The Nuremberg Laws did not assert that Jews were not human beings. They stripped them of standing and rights under the law. The defenders of the Atlantic slave trade did not usually deny that Africans were human. They treated them as goods, and refused them the protection a person is owed. Chief Justice Taney, in Dred Scott, did not rule that the man before him was not a man. He ruled that he was not a citizen within the meaning of the Constitution, of a class with “no rights which the white man was bound to respect”.

We do not equate these evils. Each has its own weight and horror. We name them because the move beneath them is one move: concede the humanity, then make protection depend on some further qualification, then keep that qualification in the hand of the powerful.

It is the abortion argument’s own logic, worn in older clothes. Nobody seriously disputes that the embryo is a living human organism; a University of Chicago survey of 5,577 biologists, a sample that was overwhelmingly pro-choice and largely non-religious, found 96% affirming that a human’s life begins at fertilisation.[1] The dispute is whether that human being counts. Which is exactly the question every regime above answered wrongly, in its own way.

Scripture refuses the whole device

“Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for God made man in his own image.” (Genesis 9:6)

Notice the ground. Not rationality. Not viability. Not citizenship, standing, or wantedness. Blood may not be shed because the one who bears it is man, made in God’s image. Humanity is the ground of protection, and personhood, rightly understood, flows from humanity rather than conferring it. The image of God is not a capacity a human being grows into or can lose. It is what he is.

This is why we will not fight on the ground of “personhood” at all. To argue about which humans qualify as persons is already to accept the device that every generation of the powerful has used against the weak. The child in the womb is a living human being. That is not the conclusion of the argument. It is the end of it.

The test you can run

When someone offers you a criterion for protection, ask one question: who else does it exclude? Self-awareness excludes the sleeping and the anaesthetised. Viability moves with the equipment in the nearest hospital. Independence excludes every newborn. The capacity to suffer excludes anyone under general anaesthetic. Being wanted makes a child’s right to live depend on another person’s feelings about him.

Every criterion except humanity itself draws a line through the middle of the human family. And a line drawn through the middle of the human family always ends up drawn by the strong, around themselves.

Sources

1. Steven Andrew Jacobs, “Biologists’ Consensus on ‘When Life Begins’”, University of Chicago, SSRN working paper (2018): 5,577 biologists across 1,058 institutions; 96% affirmed life begins at fertilisation; sample 85% pro-choice, 89% liberal, 63% non-religious. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3211703

Scripture is quoted from the English Standard Version. On Dred Scott v Sandford (1857), the ruling denied citizenship and constitutional standing; it did not deny the man’s humanity, which is precisely the point.