The human non-person

Person: An individual human being; specifically, a human being as opposed to a thing or an animal (Oxford English Dictionary).

Non-person: A person regarded as non-existent or unimportant, or as having no rights; an ignored, humiliated or forgotten person (OED).

Non-person: A person whose expunction from the attention and memory of the public is sought, especially by governmental action and usually for reasons of ideological or political deviation (American Heritage Dictionary).

A rigorous analysis of the exact biological and social status of the unborn can only be performed in three steps.

The first, and most basic, level of analysis must answer the question: Are the unborn alive? This strictly biological question, once heavily touted by the pro-abortion camp, is settled and is clearly answered in the affirmative.

The second step of the analysis is to further classify this living being as either human or non-human (there is no other possible classification - there is no entity that is "partially human").

This second strictly biological question, itself a former favourite of the pro-choicers, has also been answered without reservation and results in the pre-born being classified as human.

The third question is the most slippery of all because it attempts to create an arbitrary classification of human beings on the basis of a concept that is purely social in nature and not scientific. The third question is: Is this living human creature a person, endowed with the same rights that accrue to all other persons? Or is it somehow less than human, subject to whatever abuse and genocide we may deem to visit upon its entire "subspecies"?

Let us examine the ideological question: Should society confer upon these pre-born, living human beings the status of person?

The pro-abortion movement, having done its utmost in the past to push through the arguments that the pre-born are neither alive nor human, has completely abandoned its efforts in these directions. They have had to reluctantly accept that people no longer believe that the unborn child is either non-living or non-human. Abortionists now focus nearly exclusively on the argument of last resort in the knowledge that their sole remaining chance to retain abortion in the long-term is to deny unborn living human beings their personhood.

Mary Anne Warren, of the Hastings Centre for Bioethics (US), typifies this approach: "If we are to make a reasoned judgment about the moral status of foetuses and of non-human animals, alien life forms, intelligent machines and other problematic entities, we must develop a criterion of moral rights that is species-neutral. That is, it will not do to make 'genetic humanity', or mere genetic affiliation to the human species, either a necessary or a sufficient condition for the possession of full moral rights. The criterion for personhood must be an entity that has the actual, not merely potential, capacity for consciousness, complex, sophisticated perception, rationality, self-awareness and self-motivated behaviour".

Notice how, quite apart from the interesting echo in recent editions of local newspapers, Ms Warren defined "personhood". Under the above definition, not only would new-born babies not be classified as persons but "useless eaters" would be excluded as well: the comatose, the mentally handicapped, the chronically drunk and sufferers of advanced Alzheimer's could be euthanised and disposed of under Ms Warren's classification. It asserts that the pre-born are alive and that they are human but that a determination of 'personhood' can be left up to the individual - in other words, the pre-born baby is not a human being until its mother, or some other appointed institution, confers such humanity upon it with their will.

This is the very basis of all oppression.

When we loftily decide, either on a personal or national level, that we can summarily deprive others of their rights, we are oppressing them. Neo-feminists say that men have oppressed them by taking away their rights. The Nazis oppressed Jews, gypsies and others by taking away their rights. Whites oppressed Blacks by taking away their rights. And today's abortionists, in turn, feel justified in taking away the rights of the pre-born without a mere thought.

The Nazis used this same slippery logic to define Jews as "living, human, but non-persons". When others protested against the resulting genocide, the Nazis used the same logic that the abortion movement does, only on a larger scale; they argued that the definition of "personhood" should be set by individual nations. Revealingly, if pro-abortionists were to finally concede that the unborn really are persons but continue to cling to their notion that these persons are expendable, they will have taken a philosophical step beyond even that of the Nazis, who acknowledged the humanity of Jews but refused to acknowledge them as persons "in the real sense".

The attempt to filter out the concept of personhood from that of "human-ness" on the basis of randomly applied criteria amounts to little more than an exercise in semantics. Semantics do not change realities but they are very useful for affecting perceptions. Personhood, as has already been discussed, is properly defined by membership in the human species not by stage of development within that species. One does not progress towards becoming a person any more than one progresses towards becoming human. One either is human and, ergo, a person, or not. There is no in-between. Personhood is not a matter of size, skill, memory capacity or degree of intelligence - the status of the unborn must be determined on an objective basis not on subjective or self-serving definitions of personhood.

Arguments against the personhood of the unborn are shrouded in imperfect rationalisation and denial, stepping stones in the overall process of revoking the humanity of a group of "targeted" human beings. This process has taken many forms throughout the ages, frequently with devastating success. Nonetheless, the approach is always the same - it must be performed slowly, with great care and vigilance. Typically, when introducing such "advances" in bioethics, the first critical step is the hardest (ask the Nazi "doctors", who began their entire programme of genocide with the killing of a single handicapped infant, Baby Boy Knauer). Once this first step is taken, and public response carefully monitored and found to be favourable or neutral, all subsequent steps are easier and smoother to achieve, especially if there is no organised outcry against the initial advance.

In the United States, for example, the first difficult step in the "depersonisation" of groups of helpless people was taken in 1973 when the Supreme Court, in its infamous Roe vs Wade decision, revoked not only the personhood of the pre-born but their very status as living beings as well by labelling them "potential life". The arguments of Ms Roe have since been dismantled utterly but there was no turning back the consequences of that most dismal of judicial landmarks. Since then, abortion has ushered in the brave new world of human pesticides, leading the way to a state of complete moral subjectivism in which we are prone to justify as ethical whatever it is we want to do. It begins with the human non-person and ends... where?

Willard Gaylin, former president of the US Institute of Society, Ethics and the Life Sciences, has his own vision. He demonstrates that, once the personhood of one class of human beings has been revoked, it is very easy to do the same with others. Dr Gaylin would like to see comatose persons (he calls them "neomorts") stockpiled in special repositories (called "bioemporiums") for organ harvesting and experimentation. One of Dr Gaylin's colleagues approvingly writes that "Neomorts would provide a steady supply of blood, since they could be drained regularly... Bone marrow, cartilage and skin could be harvested and hormones, antitoxins and antibodies manufactured in neomorts... To do this (Dr Gaylin notes), we would have to accept the concept of 'personhood' as separate from 'aliveness' for adults, as we do now with foetuses".

Dr Gaylin's vision may seem shocking to some but, in fact, there is no limit to man's moral and ethical depravity once he imbibes the first seeds of deceit. It is a fact as old as evil itself.