From The Stream:
Ken Burrows, writing for the very secular site TheHumanist, wants to warn us of dangers lurking in the proposed Sanctity of Human Life Act. He thinks the bill, cosponsored by 31 Congressional Republicans, is “astonishingly sweeping” and “harmful.”
He tries hard to explain why we should be alarmed — give him credit for that — but his reasons come up empty. Let’s take a quick look at four bad reasons, then a longer look at what he really despises about the bill.
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If Ken Burrows thinks it’s contemptible that politicians are playing God with this bill, fine. We might take him seriously — if he weren’t so happy playing God with young, innocent children’s lives.
Let us remember that it is the people who want to have the license to end human life want to do so on the grounds that this human life hasn’t attained “personhood”. Yet, it is also these same people who cannot establish any objective criteria for that “personhood” status. If you want to establish the right to end life on the existence or nonexistence of “personhood” it behooves those who want to do so provide grounds that leave no possible chance that a person is killed. That they cannot do.
Therefore, I think the entire question of when “personhood” is established and the right to live that attaches to it is without merit. This is what we know. Life begins at conception. That is an indisputable scientific fact. The kind of life we are discussing that begins with human conception is human life. That is an indisputable scientific fact. The point at which “personhood” and it’s attendant right to live attaches is unknown. Given the enormous moral and legal issue that the wrong answer to this question would engender (i.e., the murder of a person) only one possible answer is reasonable. Personhood begins when human life begins. It is the only way to be sure that no person, no human being is murdered.