If you want to use the status quo as an argument for your side, you have a much stronger case in current judicial interpretation than in the dictionary. The dictionary doesn't mean a lot here (partially because their are definitions that would support both sides, partially because whether or not "person" is even the important term is itself up for debate, but mostly because dictionary definitions are usually of minimal importance to major human rights issues (and many other issues) even if things like those two points don't apply).
The reason I look at personhood is only in context of those who consider a zygote a person, thus entitled to all rights and privileges of citizenship, thus destroying it being murder. You and I had that discussion wrt Hobby Lobby, if I recall correctly. Murder is the intentional, illegal killing of a person. So the definition of "person" matters.
I think humans have human rights, and these rights should be recognized whether or not they are legal persons. (Although it could be argued that recognizing them makes them legal persons), in any case a legal person isn't the same thing as person in the more ordinary sense. Hobby Lobby is a legal person, that's why it can make (and be held to) contracts, that doesn't mean the law thinks its a human, or otherwise a thinking entity. Person has a ton of different meanings (including legal person). The edge cases of human being might be in dispute, but the basic idea is it seems simpler in the sense it doesn't have all these multiple definitions with different meanings.
Many people have an across-the-board view of the morality and want to impose theirs via law.
I see it as a human rights issue, rather than just an issue of morals (morals broadly defined includes human rights issues, so in that sense it is a moral issue, but I still think the distinction is important).
Actually I see it as a human rights issue on both sides, you have a conflict of basic human rights in a way that's pretty rare, in some ways unique. |
