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I have to agree with Justice Scalia, because the issue is not limited to just the abortion debate. Were it so, I would be in agreement with the argument that a human fetus should be afforded the same right to life as a born person.

But it goes beyond abortion. Far beyond abortion.

For example, how many of us guffawed when “human rights” were granted to non-human primates in Spain, just a few weeks ago? Yet that argument, in the law, has more validity than granting human rights to a fetus.

Because what is the objective difference between an ape and a human? Their DNA is almost identical. Some have been proven able to communicate with sign language, with humans and with other apes. Both humans and apes are tool users. In the law you *must* make an objective difference, not just point out “the obvious”. Many apes are far more intelligent than many humans.

But apes can be used as slaves, medically experimented on, and at least in the US, they have no civil rights. No right to an attorney, habeus corpus, or even a right to life. They are expendable. And what if you modify DNA to create something very human like and intelligent, but what you call an ape, and your property?

As another example, if a man kills a woman in an ordinary homicide, the penalty is probably less than if he kills her and her born child. It then becomes two homicides. But if he intends to kill just her, yet she is pregnant, it was not an “accident” that he killed her fetus, but there is no way he could not kill her fetus, because it is dependent on her for sustenance of life.

Legally, this makes them one person. But it gets worse.

What if she is a criminal, convicted of a crime and sent to prison. If her unborn child is a person, they are an innocent person sent to prison. This is not a frivolous issue, as many nations refuse to imprison pregnant women, for this very reason, even continuing with the rationale *after* the child is born. That is, regarding a nursing mother and her infant as *still* legally the same person, until the infant is weaned.

It even overlaps into civil disputes, such as divorce. If a fetus is a person, legally a child, then consideration must be given as to who has custody. If the mother is regarded as unfit, can her unborn child be awarded to its father? And this is an easy one.

Fights are ongoing across the country over the status of frozen sperm and ova, and have been for years. A divorced woman who uses her ex-husbands sperm to conceive can often demand child support from him though conception was out of his control. If he dies, a born child can become his inheritor even if he gave nothing to his ex-wife. Can an unborn child become his inheritor?

Surrogate mothers also become a major problem if they are carrying a human being, because they cannot legally sell a human being, even to his biological parents.

It goes on and on. For Scalia to say otherwise would undermine decades of legal decisions totally unrelated to abortion. Instead, he wisely returns the decision to the individual States, most of which are more than glad to severely restrict abortion.