[aruanan]

Every individual in whatever stage of the human lifespan should be recognized as a "person" in law; otherwise, any socially disfavored individual or community (blacks, Jews, children, the autistic, the congitively impaired, alcoholics, the obese, what-have-you) can be excluded from the recognition of "human rights," the most fundamental of which is the right to simply go on living.

If “human being” is a later stage of an individual’s existence, then what is the name for the being started at conception and ended at death? On the individual level, pro-life people call it human whether conscious or not, crippled, retarded, senile, diseased, sinful, intelligent, female, or male. Pro-abortion people permit “quality of life and “value to society” to define the parameters of being human and those who have the power to do so to define those terms, whether a woman and her physician, N.A.R.A.L, or Big Brother.

[Mrs. Don-o]

Exactly. Otherwise, human rights are not “inherent” and “inalienable” but merely based on temporary variances imposed by the powerful and enforced by the edge of the knife.