Should a human ovum be granted legal "personhood?"

No

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by Dean L. Sinclair

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No. Human ova should not be granted "personhood" from conception. The idea is attractive from an ethical standpoint, but the societal consequences of attempted implementation would be little short of catastrophic. The result would be the virtually total subjugation of the rights of on group of humans, people of child-bearing capability, in particular. women, to a new classification of human, even, in logical extension' to before they would exist as a fertilized egg.

"Personhood" is the grant of the full protection of the law available to any person. Certain groups in the USofA are trying to get states to adopt constitutional amendments which would grand this status to human ova from the moment of conception. While it is logically defensible that human life begins at conception, granting full legal protection to all fertilized human ova opens a Pandora's box of problems. In their zeal to find a way to outlaw abortion in the USofA, activists have either ignored, glossed over or not even thought of the results of "Personhood from Conception."

To consider some of there problems, let us assume, for arguments sake, that this "Personhood" has become a law that has to be enforced as much as is possible. It is, therefore, our duty to consider the questions and problems that arise.

This new category of humans has problems from the start. It is estimated that half of fertilized ova do not implant in the mother's womb and die immediately. There is some evidence which suggests that. were all ova to have implanted, most people would have been twins. Of those that implant, approximately a third do not survive to be "given to the light." We are extending legal protection to a population, two thirds of whom have a less than nine months life expectancy, all of it before we have previously generally considered life to begin. It is obvious that the old concept of "birthday" now becomes far less important and the "Instant time of conception" becomes all important. To give this person the protection of the law from the start, the instant of that start need be determined with the greatest accuracy possible. The logical consequence is that every woman of child-bearing age need to have a continuous monitoring device which could determine the instant that a new person could come to being within her. Our technology is not that well-developed, so for the moment, all that can be done is to require immediate reporting of any suspected new life and as close as possible an estimate of when it came into being.

Now, since there is a new category of what we may call "pre-childhood people," it is obvious that Children's' Protective Services will have to have another division devoted to "Pre-birth Human Protective Services" and will have to develop new techniques for handling cases of abuse and neglect. Considering the high-risk population that they will be guarding, they will need some sort of monitoring device for as much of this new population as possible. Again, our present technology is not geared for the task. We also have a definite problem of how to handle penalties for abuse and neglect, it is not feasible to remove an unborn child from its immediate environment.

As with the death of any other person, investigation and determination of the cause of death needs to be done for the death of every member of this group. For the half that have life expectancies of only a few minutes at best, this again poses considerable problems. In the future it may be possible to lower the death rate by a parental screening process so that activities that could be considered "preconception abuse and neglect" will be ruled out. There needs to be instituted as soon as possible a licensing program for prospective originators of new life to make sure that they are physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually and economically qualified to take on the responsibilities of gestation and subsequent parenthood.

While a licensing program may eventually help with the problem of pre-conceptual abuse and neglect, there still needs be some way to determine if any "miscarriage" is due to abuse, neglect, abortion, or an "Act of God." In this Brave New World that we have created, God is now the only Legal Abortionist. All of the other causes would be at least misdemeanors, and abortion might now carry the penalty of first-degree murder. Any viable ova that have been previously stored represent a ticklish problem. It is perhaps best that they by placed in permanent cryogenic storage until such time as a way can be found to legally deal with them. For now all in-vitro fertilization has to end as well as any cloning-type experiments with humans.

It would appear that with this new situation of this entire new population to monitor and protect that our present resources are inadequate for any sort of reasonable attempt at enforcement of the new mandates implied by "Personhood." It would be very helpful if this population were much smaller, or at least, not increasing. Possibly some way could be worked out to institute immediately a licence requirement with a moratorium on license issuing for five years, that is try to keep new members of this population from appearing for about five years until the mechanisms can be developed for protecting them. This is an idea, but, again how would we be able to handle the violators who went ahead and created new individuals without violating the rights of those new individuals even if they were illegally created?

The past few paragraphs, this writer has been trying to project into a world where "Personhood" has been granted to look at the impossible quagmire that such an action could cause. If "Personhood" be granted to human ova from the instant of fertilization, the result could be disastrous to the lives of all individuals of child-bearing age. One might even say that in such a society even taking a chance on becoming a parent would be very close to insanity. The intrusive regimentation that could result in such an environment if the theory were taken to the logical consequences would be a total legal morass.

It may be noted that, in the discussion above, it has been assumed that the innovation were to take place throughout a society. If it were to take place in a more limited area, say, for instance in Georgia, US, where there is definite agitation for the idea at this time, one might expect that there would be a good deal of emigration to surrounding states of the younger population.

While legal protection for all humans from their "instant of creation" can be considered an admirable idea, attempting to put the principle into practice would be a practical nightmare: therefore, the idea of "Personhood for Human Ova" should be abandoned.

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Note: This article, as first submitted, was rejected as being too balanced an overview to be usable in debate. The point that is trying to be made is that, if a balanced overview be taken of the situation, the people who are pushing the idea might realize that, like King Midas, they might not like the results if, by any chance, they were it what they were asking for.

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