You are dodging the question, yet again. Do you think the unborn have natural rights? Your reluctance to even engage this question highlights the fundamental defectiveness of Constitutionally protected “abortion rights” – they only exist by refusing to consider the humanity of the unborn.

What I actually said was quite different. You asked: “How can you give natural rights to pre-sentient newborns but not pre-sentient fetuses?” I replied: “I never said one should, so the premise of your critique is a straw-man.” I never said anything about how natural rights should be distributed. I took no position whatsoever on whether God should give natural rights to newborns. In fact, I said: “The argument is not over what rights God vests in man, as it were; but whether it is justified for the state to condition their recognition.” If your argument is with God, leave me out of it.

Are you telling me that you think newborns have no natural rights?

“The argument is not over what rights God vests in man, as it were; but whether it is justified for the state to condition their recognition”

The word “recognition” is apt – natural rights pre-exist before the state, and there are occasions when the state may not recognize them. This is legitimate when there is a conflict of rights. The state may restict my right to property if I exercise it to take someone else’s. This is called “stealing”. A state may restrict an adults right to have sex by preventing people from having sex with infants or minors. This is called “statuatory rape”. Similarly, child labor may be criminialzed due to the historically documented exploitative relationship between employer and child. In all cases, some rights are suppressed based on protecting others. Rights may also be ignored to further legitimate state interests, e.g. the draft of voting age requirements. These age-based distinctions refer to state recognition of rights, but have nothing to do with whether or not there is an underlying natural right to recognize. Infants have freedom of speech, even though they can’t talk. They have freedom of association, even though they can’t even crawl.

So my question, which you keep dodging, is why do you think unborn humans not have the same natural rights afforded to newborn infants?

I never said one should, so the premise of your critique is a straw-man.

I am curious how you can make [an age-based] distinction without completely eroding the very foundation of natural law.

I already gave two examples. One can note that consent necessarily follows from man’s capacity to reason; since the ability to reason of children is lesser than that of mature adults, there is less to which the state will acknowledge they can consent to, e.g., child labor is restricted. That is not inconsistent with the right to one’s labor, because it is a part of the natural state of affairs that children are cared for by their parents. One might also say that the right to reproduce is a natural right; one could in the same way refuse to recognize as valid the consent of children engaging in sex acts with much older adults, because a part of the natural state of affairs of humankind is location in time; we accrete experience and wisdom used in good decision-making over time. Likewise, fetuses are younger and located in wombs and newborns are older and not; a difference in age and in the natural state of affairs can support a distinction in the recognition of consent. The argument is not over what rights God vests in man, as it were; but whether it is justified for the state to condition their recognition — if your answer is no, then it seems your problem is that there is a state at all, and you are an anarchist: so I fail to see why you are so upset that I have attributed to you the necessary consequences of your anarchist position, i.e., permitting chimpanzees to run rampant in the courts and pedophiles to run rampant in the streets; that is your favored state, the state of nature, is it not? If, on the other hand, you are simply disagreeing whether the line is properly drawn, then the question is “whether we should replace the current rule with the rule you now propose.”
In that case you have the burden of demonstrating that your rule would not result in anarchy, or at the very least, worse consequences that the status quo, if taken to its logical extension. You have failed thus far.

Giving Consitional protection to the unborn (which is the only “rule” I have suggested) has none of the consequences you ascribe. Any hypothetical scenario involving chimpanzees could just as well happen right now, due to what you have already noted about neurological development. If we give rights to two year olds, why not chimpanzees, right? This debate is unchanged by giving Constitutional protection to the unborn.

However, you seem to want to avoid talking about natural rights of the unborn. How can you give natural rights to pre-sentient newborns but not pre-sentient fetuses? Earlier, you said:

“So, a distinction based on age, or mental development, can be made that is consistent with Locke and with natural rights”

I am curious how you can make this distinction without completely eroding the very foundation of natural law. How can a specific human creature not receive the right to life of all human creatures? I think such a distinction inherently contradicts the notion of natural rights.

Why limit it at species? What separates humans from other primates is sentience. Chimpanzee fetuses and human fetuses have the same level of sentience. They have the same fundamental human nature. Like I said, you support rights for chimpanzees, or your theory is arbitrary.

Since I have said quite clearly that my criteria for receiving human rights should be membership in the human race regardless of age

If that is your view, then there should be no child labor laws, and no laws against pedophilia. Are you a member of NAMBLA?

Since I have said quite clearly that my criteria for receiving human rights should be membership in the human race regardless of age, I do not understand why you persists in claiming that I think chimpanzees deserve human rights, or why this is some logical consequence of my position. They are quite simply not human beings.

However, it seems that you disgree with Roe’s assertion that the right to life does not begin solely at birth. I am now curious as to when *you* think humans are entitled to the specific right to life that, as you say, “naturally flow[s] from rational self-interest as a sentient being”. Since we are willing to grant a right to life to members of our species that have not acheived full developmental consciousness (e.g. a newborn baby), I cannot find a logical justification for not granting this right to other, less developed members of the species which have the same fundamental human nature. This is the essence of “natural rights”. If rights are attached at some fixed point chosen by man, they are not natural at all.

So, a distinction based on age, or mental development, can be made that is consistent with Locke and with natural rights. I didn’t actually say I supported Roe or its specific distinction, i.e., drawing of the line. The point is, your drawing of the line, on the bases you claim, makes no sense, is inconsistent with the Constitution, and results in Paul Clement battling it out with a chimpanzee SCOTUS.

Ok, then explain to me why this should apply to newborn infants but not nine month fetuses. Being “a sentient being” has nothing to do with being in the womb. If a newborn is a “sentient being”, then so is a fetus.

“The view that there is such a thing as a genetic human creature with no rights that is not a ‘person’ is a superstition perpetuated by the SCOTUS.”

Now, you are predicating human rights on genetics. That seems a great way to exclude the personhood of chimpanzees — even when they are of the same level of sentience as a human — but it also has no founding in our Constitution. The Constitution does not define “person” by reference to DNA. The mentions of “person” in the Constitution all concern rights of the Lockean variety that naturally flow from rational self-interest as a sentient being; the problem with your reading into the Constitution a “human genome” clause is that it excludes those beings whose personhood and autonomy would qualify without such a clause present, e.g., chimpanzees. You have given no justification for why the Constitution must necessarily be read to obtain only for those with a particular genetic make-up. If anything, one could argue that limiting constitutional personhood on the basis of slight genetic variation was erased from the Constitution with the passage of the 13th and 19th Amendments. It seems your theory is simply arbitary.

Indeed, as proof of the arbitrariness of your reading of the Constitution, I charged that your reading of the Constitution, it “should [of necessity] include protection for homosexual sodomites and their marriages,” to which you replied that “Of course homosexuals are people that deserve equal protection.” Please explain where in the Constitution it mandates that any and all marriage laws must sanction gay “marriages” in order to be valid under the Constitution. I don’t see anything about marriage in the Constitution at all. And I certainly don’t remember a right to gay marriage existing at common law. You can google Peter Singer all you want, but that won’t make your argument in favor of a zany constitutional interpretation the least bit sensible.

Whatever man – you keep saying this even though it makes no sense. Answer this – when a fetus becomes a newborn baby, is it A) the *same* creature or B) a *different* creature? If you picked “A”, then the two have the same biological identity. It’s so obvious it seems silly writing down. A fetus is a creature of type “homo sapiens”. To claim otherwise is foolish.

“Your idea of when life begins appears to be based on ‘ensoulment’ which is not science: it is Catholic doctrine.”

I have said no such thing. Being a genetic human being happens well before 80 or 40 days – it happens at the moment of conception. Again, these are the basic facts of sexual reproduction. Once conception happens, reproduction has occured and a new being begins to gestate. The view that there is such a thing as a genetic human creature with no rights that is not a “person” is a superstition perpetuated by the SCOTUS.

“Then your argument should include protection for homosexual sodomites and their marriages, because they deserve equal protection under the law, too. Or is your claim now that homosexual sodomites are not human beings?”

How many times have I said that the only criteria for human rights (and hence Constitutional protection) should be membership in the human race? Of course homosexuals are people that deserve equal protection. Take a step back and *listen* to what I am saying.

“Then why won’t you answer why, if it protects the personhood and autonomy of fetuses, it does not protect the personhood and autonomy of chimpanzees?”

A chimpanzee is not a human being in any stage of development. A fetus, newborn, and adult are all *humans* in various stages of development and thus should be entitled to human rights. Now as to your concern as to the neurological similarities of humans and chimpanzees, some such as Peter Singer (google for him) argue that the rights of higher animals should be elevated to the same level as human rights. But this does not change the fundamental inconsistency regarding how the SCOTUS treats the unborn – as property. It is simply inconsistent and silly to say that a newborn is entitled to a full set of human rights, and a nine month fetus on the verge of birth is not. Whether and how chimpanzees and sentient aliens (should they exist) deserve rights is a debate for another day. The question before is if the unborn humans should get the same human rights adults get.

Happening to be in a womb is a biological distinction. The problem is that you claimed there was no biological distinction. There is one; your claim is false.

It is an undisputed fact of science that the lifespan of human beings begins at conception and ends at natural death.

Your idea of when life begins appears to be based on “ensoulment,” which is not science: it is Catholic doctrine.

A newborn and an old man deserve equal protection because they are both human beings. Likewise, a fetus deserves the same protection because it is a human being.

Then your argument should include protection for homosexual sodomites and their marriages, because they deserve equal protection under the law, too. Or is your claim now that homosexual sodomites are not human beings?

This is not a debate about what rights the Constitution protection, but who it protects.

Then why won’t you answer why, if it protects the personhood and autonomy of fetuses, it does not protect the personhood and autonomy of chimpanzees? It seems you are discriminating against chimapanzees simply because they are not fully sentient — that is the less than 1% difference that makes them not-human — but then again, fetuses are not fullt sentient, either. In fact, the neurological development of chimapanzees and humans is perfectly identical until age 3; if human fetuses are constitutional persons, then so are chimpanzee fetuses, because there is no biological distinction between them. It appears that, on your crazy reading of the constitution, chimpanzees have constitutional rights until age 3, which they lose thereafter. Please explain how that constitutes equal protection.