The Supreme Court decision, while welcome, has left human personhood not up to scientific determination but to democratic selection.
The Supreme Court decision, while welcome, has left human personhood not up to scientific determination but to democratic selection.
T wo years ago, on June 24, 2022, after nearly a half century of dehumanization and science denial, the Supreme Court finally overturned Roe v. Wade with its opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. That ruling, delivered by Justice Samuel Alito, affirmed the humanity of the human embryo and fetus and ushered in a new era of life-affirming laws for unborn children across America. Pro-life activists rejoiced. The pro-abortion movement lashed out in fury. But now it is appropriate to wonder: Was the decision really such a clear victory for one side and defeat for the other?
What Americans didn’t seem to notice is that, like Roe, the Dobbs decision did not reflect objective biological reality about humankind. The Supreme Court opinion failed to explicitly state that all unborn children are “persons” who have a constitutional right to life under the equal-protection clause of the 14th Amendment. By not constitutionally guaranteeing life for the unborn, Dobbs perpetuated the fallacious notion that some human beings have a reduced status — i.e., that there are some humans (the unborn in this case) who are less than fully human persons. Additionally, Dobbs empowered “the citizens of each State” to redefine the human being and the human life cycle according to their personal proclivities.
But the status of one’s humanity is not a matter of public-opinion polls or ballot initiatives. Assigning relative values at any point in a human being’s life is wholly arbitrary and scientifically invalid. There is no “pre-person” stage in human development. An embryo or fetus does not move from being a potential person to half or two-thirds of a person as his or her human development progresses. The scientific facts demonstrate that a human being, a human individual, and a human person are one and inseparable. Individual human development is a continuum, in which stages overlap and blend into one another — even after birth. Our humanity doesn’t accrue or accumulate over time or at certain developmental milestones. A human being begins to exist all at once.
In terms of human sexual reproduction, fertilization (not birth) is the leap from zero to everything, from two mere cells (the sperm and the oocyte) to a new whole, living, individual human being/organism. The biological science of human embryology not only codifies that all sexually reproduced human beings start to exist at fertilization (in Stage 1 of the Carnegie Stages of Human Embryonic Development) but also that this biological process initiates the continuum of human life. Thus, after fertilization, the new human being continues to grow and develop as the same human being throughout the rest of the embryonic period, the fetal period, and then after birth, during the subsequent stages of human life.
Scientifically, fertilization is when “personhood” begins.
Some people claim that certain developmental milestones (e.g., implantation, birth, sentience) change the status of an already existing human being. But again, such claims are purely arbitrary. “Biomarkers” occur throughout a human being’s life and do not imply any change in the nature or essence of an already existing human being. Applying a reduced status to a human embryo or fetus (or to a human being at any stage of development) requires a nullification of the continuum of human life.
In Roe, Justice Harry Blackmun ignored the science that had documented the objective facts of human sexual reproduction for (by then) nearly a century and disingenuously maintained that the beginning of a human life remained a mystery. “We need not resolve the difficult question of when life begins,” he demurred. In one sense, he was right: There was, and is, no difficult question to resolve. The problem is that he had the wrong answer. Because of that wrong answer, abortion has killed more than 65 million unborn children.
We should be glad that Dobbs overturned Roe. But by declining to accept the continuum of human life, the decision validated and energized the false, destructive narrative that the embryo or fetus is not fully human and thus that the actual human life cycle starts at birth. It also exposed unborn children to a general public that has been poisoned by 50 years of Roe’s fake science about human development. As a result, today, nearly 40 precent of young adults think that a human life starts, human reproduction occurs, at birth. Bill Maher’s recent take on abortion exemplifies the hazards of this knowledge gap and encapsulates the dehumanization crisis: “They [pro-lifers] think it’s murder and it kind of is. I’m just okay with that. I am.”
Abortion kills an actual human being with a truly human nature. Not a “potential” human being, not a “pre-person,” not “kind of” a person, but a whole, individual, and living human person. There is no such thing as a human nonperson. Maher’s declaration to the contrary stems from his belief in this concept of a “reduced status,” which is both fabricated and sinister. Post-Dobbs pro-life laws have saved tens of thousands of lives. But Dobbs still left the rights of a human being disconnected from the objective embryological facts of human development. Until that is rectified and when a human life starts is affirmed as the time-related value for defining human rights, millions upon millions of unborn lives remain at stake, and all Americans are only a ballot initiative away from arbitrarily being redefined as “kind of” human.