Recently at Harvard Law School, there have been many discussions about marginalized populations and the role of the law in protecting the defenseless and disadvantaged. Notably absent from this discussion is that there remains a class of human beings who are still excluded from the fundamental rights guaranteed to all persons by the United States Constitution. FULL ARTICLE
Although Justice Blackmun infamously stated that the Supreme Court “need not resolve the difficult question of when life begins,”[3] the question has long been long settled scientifically.[4] Biologically, individual members of the species homo sapiens begin their life-cycle at fertilization. From the earliest stage of the human life-cycle, the unborn entity is biologically human.
The unborn child and the newborn infant are only separated by a few inches. The short journey down the birth canal does not magically transform that entity from non-human to human. The event of birth cannot impart humanity upon a non-human entity.
The unborn child’s dependence upon another human being doesn’t make her any less of a person. Children, especially newborns, are particularly dependent on adults and can hardly survive without them. Human value cannot vary based on the degree of that dependence. If it did, those who depend on insulin or kidney medication would have less value than the rest of us. If dependence is the criterion for human value, would conjoined twins who share vital systems possess a right to life?