Unborn Persons

Tuesday night I sat in on the hearing of the Children and Families Committee of the Missouri State Legislature.  The committee considered four bills and it took quite a bit of time.  The chair of the committee is Diane Franklin and she did an excellent job of keeping things moving and keeping order in a challenging situation.

One bill was considered that would basically require people to be 18 before they got married.  On the one hand I do not think anyone should be getting married before they are 18.  On the other hand I feel my libertarian hackles rising when government tells people they cannot do things, even things I do not think they should do.  I also realize that I would not be in favor of 5 year olds entering binding contracts and so I am ok with age based descrimination in theory.  Tough call.

Another bill was introduced to protect first amendment rights of people and groups who provide maternity assistance to help women carry babies to term. The bill is in response to a St. Louis City action that protects people from discrimination on the basis of reproductive rights decisions.  The cosponsor of the St. Louis bill was there to explain that their bill was in response to fears about the new administration. Catholic and ProLife groups testified that they feared legal action from St. Louis if they fired someone who recommended abortions.

A third bill would provide notification to both parents if a minor was to have an abortion.  The bill is merely a notification.  There were some valid concerns about the effect of the law in forced incestuous relations but overall the notification seemed to make sense.

The final bill to be considered was Rep Mike Moon’s “Personhood” bill, which is HJR18.  

HJR 18 would, upon voter approval, amend the Constitution of Missouri to declare:

“That the term “person” under this constitution includes every human being, including every unborn child at every stage of biological development from the moment of conception until birth”.

HJR18 would declare that unborn babies are human persons and that would give them protection under the Missouri Constitution.

Representatives from NARAL and Planned Parenthood and others were there to testify against the bill.  Although the bill simply clarifies that these are persons those testifying against the bill were quick to point out that not only would this bill outlaw abortions it could call into question certain types of “contraceptives”, simply based on the fact that this unborn child is now to be considered a person.  They warned of “severe consequences” to mothers if the babies  they carry are to be considered persons.

I know there is a vigorous debate about when human life begins, and some of you are on one side of that debate while some of you are on the other side.  That’s ok.

I would offer that life certainly does NOT begin BEFORE conception.  Until sperm and ovum come together there is no human life, and no personhood, and nothing to protect.  

As a father I watched three kids come into the world.  I can tell you unequivocally, through personal observation that human life or personhood does not begin at birth; it begins before birth.  Every mother knows that she has the same living human person inside her ten minutes before birth that she is holding in her arms ten minutes after birth.  Those twenty minutes do not magically confer personhood.  Life begins before birth.

There was discussion of viability, which occurs somewhere around 20 weeks, and the implication that viability, which with the nature of medical technology is a moving target, may be the point at which a baby achieves personhood.  I have to reject that as also being arbitrary.

As I pointed out this evening, government does not give us our rights.  Our rights are inherent and government merely acknowledges the rights we already have.  Government exists to protect the right of each individual to Life, Liberty, and Property.  Each of us has the inherent right to life, and government exists to protect that right. 

The folks from NARAL and PP took great pains to point out the hardship that could fall on some women if the righhts of unborn humans were acknowledged by government.  For one thing, it would make it illegal to kill the unborn person, and that would introduce great hardship and difficulty to women who became pregnant and wanted to end the child’s life rather than caring for it or putting it up for adoption.  

We are discussing a twenty week period between conception and viability; the first twenty weeks of each of our existences.   The one side argues that everyone should be considered a living human person from the moment of conception forward, and the other side argues that the first twenty weeks should be set aside as non-personhood so that the mother can end the life of the child if she finds it inconvenient.  

Our rights are inherent but they can be taken from us and they frequently are.  I believe that each of us are fully human persons from the moment of conception until we die a natural death and I don’t believe in ending human life except in self defense.

As a hard core libertarian some will question whether I am failing to defend the rights of the mother to her own free will and to do as she damn well pleases without government interference.  The truth is that I do fully defend all of her individual liberties.  It’s just that there are no personal rights that require the killing of another human being that does not threaten you.

I would not defend anyone’s “right” to violate the free speech of another, so why would I defend anyone’s “right” to violate the life of another?

If you must violate the rights of another, it is necessary for you to have both standing and cause.  Perhaps one could make an argument that your unborn child is causing you harm in some way, and in the case of a true threat to a mother's life that would be valid. But an innocent human life is unlikely to have provided any “cause’.  The truth is, the baby is inconvenient.  The right of this unborn human to live requires the mother to continue hosting, just as a newborn has to be fed to keep it alive.

We recognize that not feeding an infant is a crime, but we are still struggling to acknowledge that the new DNA that is created when conception occurs is a real human for those first 20 weeks and that failing to care for that human is also a crime.

HJR18 is a good start.  We need to acknowledge the reality that our rights begin when we are created and not 20 weeks later when we feel it is convenient and when we have all of the killing out of the way.

And then we can work on abolishing the death penalty.  Because life really is sacred.