'Fetal Personhood' Is Religious Right's New Dangerous Word Trap in Abortion Debate{long read}

http://www.alternet.org/belief/fetal-personhood-religious-rights-new-dangerous-word-trap-abortion-debate'



What does it mean to be a person? For the anti-abortion group Personhood USA, a “person” is present from the moment a sperm penetrates an egg, and members are fighting to have their definition encoded into law. Online coaching tools for abortion opponents use the term person interchangeably with human or human being. Are they interchangeable? Does it matter?

Personhood USA is driven by a mission that dates back to Roe v. Wade, when, in the process of legalizing abortion, Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun made this comment: “If this suggestion of personhood is established, the appellant's [Roe's] case, of course, collapses, for the fetus' right to life would then be guaranteed specifically by the [Fourteenth] Amendment.”

In other words, if an embryo or fetus can be defined legally as a person, abortion could potentially be classified as murder and a host of other legal rights could accrue to the developing fetus. The set of legal arguments that support abortion rights would not disappear but they would shrink. In recent years, Personhood USA and conservative Christian allies have been building case law and regulatory precedents with this goal in mind.

To win, they have to equate personhood with human life. But that’s no easy task.