Looking at the situation in the UK today, it’s easy to get disheartened in the face of all the challenges facing the cause of life. However, history shows us that ours is not the only cause fighting seemingly insurmountable odds and the weight of public opinion. Take this selection of quotes:
“An Indian is not a person within the meaning of the Constitution.”
Legal scholar George F. Canfield, The American Law Review of 1881
“'People of the United States' and 'citizens' are synonymous terms, and mean the same thing ….[Negroes] are not included, and were not intended to be included, under the word ‘citizen’ in the Constitution, and can therefore claim none of the rights and privileges which that instrument provides for and secures to citizens of the United States.”
Dred Scott v. Sandford, US Supreme Court, 1857
“The intention of the Legislature must have been, in using the word ‘person’ in statutes concerning jurors and jury lists, to confine its meaning to men.,,,,,It is unthinkable that those who first framed and selected the words for this statute … had any design that it should ever include women within its scope”
Massachusetts Supreme Court, 1931
“Anyone who has a hereditary illness can be rendered sterile by a surgical operation …. Anyone is hereditarily ill who suffers from one of the following illnesses: 1. Congenital feeble-mindedness 2. Schizophrenia 3. Manic depression 4. Hereditary epilepsy 5. Huntington's chorea 6. Hereditary blindness 7. Hereditary deafness 8. Serious physical deformities…. the operation must be performed even if it is against the wishes of the person to be sterilised”
Law for the Prevention of Progeny with Hereditary Diseases, Germany, 1933
“Since the unborn have never been recognized as persons in the whole sense, an abortion is not the termination of life”
Planned Parenthood v Casey, U.S. Supreme Court, 1992
“It is doubtful if a foetus becomes conscious until quite late in pregnancy ... even the presence of consciousness would only put a foetus at a level comparable to a rather simple non-human animal - not that of a dog, let alone a chimpanzee ...”
Peter Singer, Professor of Bioethics, Princeton University,1995
Looking back at history, we can be very hopeful that legal discrimination against "non-persons" will one day be overturned. It may take a long time and an almost superhuman effort, but that is no reason not to take up the fight. Just as we look back and shudder at how educated, modern people could regard those of a different gender or race as somehow not human, our descendants will do the same to those who hold dangerous views about the human identity of vulnerable humans like unborn children or embryos.
Personhood
It is an interesting topic for students to debate - when is a person a person? I think it was under the Romanian governmentthat babies were not people until they became about 13 months old or so. This was to camoflage the number of infant mortalities.