Free Republic

Even a couple of years ago, the idea that artificial intelligence might be conscious and capable of subjective experience seemed like pure science fiction. But in recent months, we’ve witnessed a dizzying flurry of developments in AI, including language models like ChatGPT and Bing Chat with remarkable skill at seemingly human conversation. Given these rapid shifts and the flood of money and talent devoted to developing ever smarter, more humanlike systems, it will become increasingly plausible that AI systems could exhibit something like consciousness. But if we find ourselves seriously questioning whether they are capable of real emotions and suffering,...

[Catholic Caucus] Pope Francis just said he won’t comment on unborn children as ‘persons’But what was more controversial in the interview was the Pope’s talk of polarization.(LifeSiteNews) — In a new interview with America Magazine, Pope Francis upheld the humanity of our unborn brothers and sisters but refused to say that they were, well, people. “Therefore, there is a living human being,” he said of the month-old fetus. “I do not say a person, because this is debated, but a living human being.” But in the United States of America, the personhood of the unborn child is a big deal....

It can be maddening and baffling to engage in debate with left-wing activists. Their love of ad hominem arguments and non sequiturs would make a sophist blush. Their stated principles shift during an argument like a kaleidoscope. That doesn't even begin to take into account their shrieking rage and cosplay costumes. Yet on the abortion question, all their histrionics are designed to obscure the one fundamental question that must be answered before any further discussion can take place: is the fetus a human person or is he/she not? If he is, he is entitled to all the protections all other...

An orangutan held in an Argentine zoo can be freed and transferred to a sanctuary after a court recognized the ape as a "non-human person" unlawfully deprived of its freedom, local media reported on Sunday. Animal rights campaigners filed a habeas corpus petition - a document more typically used to challenge the legality of a person's detention or imprisonment - in November on behalf of Sandra, a 29-year-old Sumatran orangutan at the Buenos Aires zoo. In a landmark ruling that could pave the way for more lawsuits, the Association of Officials and Lawyers for Animal Rights (AFADA) argued the ape...

(Reuters/REUTERS - An orangutan named Sandra, covered with a blanket, gestures inside its cage at Buenos Aires' Zoo, in this December 8, 2010 file photo. An orangutan held in an Argentine zoo can be freed) BUENOS AIRES (Reuters) - An orangutan held in an Argentine zoo can be freed and transferred to a sanctuary after a court recognized the ape as a "non-human person" unlawfully deprived of its freedom, local media reported on Sunday. Animal rights campaigners filed a habeas corpus petition - a document more typically used to challenge the legality of a person's detention or imprisonment - in...

Orangutan In Argentina Zoo Recognised By Court As 'Non-Human Person' Sandra, 29, can be freed in Buenos Aires and transferred to a sanctuary Animal rights campaigners win after filing habeas corpus petition Tommy the chimp is not a person, New York court decides Sandra the orangutan 21 December 2014 An orangutan held in an Argentinian zoo can be freed and transferred to a sanctuary after a court recognised the ape as a “non-human person” unlawfully deprived of its freedom, local media reported on Sunday. Animal rights campaigners filed a habeas corpus petition – a document more typically used to challenge...

An orangutan named Sandra, at the center of a landmark ruling in Argentina that said she is a "non-human person" entitled to some of the same rights as humans, is making her way to a Florida sanctuary where great apes enjoy those privileges without benefit of a court order. Once Sandra is there, the 33-year-old orangutan will have the company of others in her species for the first time in many years. Sandra left her solitary world at a zoo in Buenos Aires in late September and is currently in Kansas, where she'll remain in quarantine until she's cleared to...

At the time of the Roe v. Wade decision, I was a college student — an anti-war, mother-earth, feminist, hippie college student. That particular January I was taking a semester off, living in the D.C. area and volunteering at the feminist “underground newspaper” Off Our Backs. As you’d guess, I was strongly in favor of legalizing abortion. The bumper sticker on my car read, “Don’t labor under a misconception; legalize abortion.” The first issue of Off Our Backs after the Roe decision included one of my movie reviews, and also an essay by another member of the collective criticizing the...

The Alabama Supreme Court has ruled that a wrongful death lawsuit brought by a woman who claims her doctor caused her to have a miscarriage by administering an abortion-inducing drug can proceed. Kimberly Stinnett’s usual doctor was reportedly out the day of her appointment. Karla Kennedy, the doctor who was filling in that day, believed that Stinnett had an ectopic pregnancy since she had had one previously. Thus, Kennedy decided to administer methotrexate, a drug that, as the court noted, is “intended to cause the end of the pregnancy.” However, when Stinnett’s usual doctor, William Huggins, examined her pregnancy via...

AS EXPECTED, the European Parliament's legal affairs committee voted in favour of extending rights to robots, granting them what the committee called "electronic personhood", by 17 votes to two, with two abstentions. The robot 'bill of rights' is intended to cover such issues as liability, such as when automated or robotic systems are involved in accidents or go postal, as well as ethical issues, such as should it be legal to beat your robot? Socialist worker Mady Delvaux, a Luxembourgois politician and vice-chair of the Committee on Legal Affairs, said that the EU "urgently need(s) to create a robust European...

... Our Constitution specifies that no person shall be deprived of their life without due process. So the bill's provisions allowing abortions to be performed without any due process is on its face unconstitutional. The Supreme Court, in Roe opinion, opined that the unborn child is not a person. That's a legal fiction. When Roe opinion was written, it was commonly thought that before you or I became human, we went through various stages of biological development. "Ontogeny recapitulates Phylogeny" was the popular phrase taught to schoolchildren as scientific fact -- that we each start as a tadpole-like creature and...

At first glance, a reader might get the impression that the title of this article refers to individuals such as candidates for political office, abortion advocates like President Obama, or opposing cultural pressure groups. If any of these come to mind, then you should think again. The people to whom I am referring are the preborn—the innocent children whose right to life is bandied about constantly by the media, the debaters, the pundits, and others. It sometimes seems that the phrase “abortion issue” is really all they want to write about or discuss. It is rare to see a reference...

December 14, 2015 (LifeSiteNews) -- A fascinating article in The Public Discourse by political scientist Carson Holloway of The Heritage Foundation makes an irrefutable case that “corporations are people, too.” Quoting everyone from William Blackstone to Alexander Hamilton, Holloway demonstrates that the idea of “an artificial being, invisible, intangible, and existing only in contemplation of law” (Chief Justice John Marshall) is not only older than the Republic but essential to the functioning of society. This has long been embedded in federal law.  Holloway cites Title I of the U.S. Code, which states that “unless the context indicates otherwise” the “words ‘person’ and ‘whoever’...

HARTFORD, Connecticut, October 26, 2015 (LifeSiteNews) – Melanie and Floyd Foster's baby died, they say, because their doctor, OB/GYN Corinne de Cholnoky, ruptured the baby's membrane while trying to remove an IUD. As a direct result, they say, their premature baby was later born alive but died after two hours. Because the baby was only 22 weeks along, Dr. de Cholnoky says the baby was not viable and therefore not a person, and no wrongful death occurred. Because the baby was born alive, the Fosters – and the judge presiding over the case – say the baby was a person,...

On May 30, 2008, defendant, driving eastbound on Whiskey Road in Suffolk County, entered the westbound lane and struck the vehicle of Robert and Mary Kelly head on, killing them both. At the time of the collision, defendant was 34 weeks pregnant. She was taken to a local hospital where, due to signs of fetal distress, she consented to an emergency cesarean section. Despite the best efforts of hospital personnel, the baby died six days later. An autopsy confirmed that the cause of death was due to injuries sustained in the accident.... Following deliberations, the jury returned a verdict finding...

I found this online, and to use whiny social justice speak, it triggered something in me. Notice the regression? Not only in age, but scientifically as well. We understand more about life than at any point in human history, by far. That understanding is on a molecular level, and yet liberals want to pretend that a fetus is just a clump of cells (when they're not ignoring the organs they sell) and that it doesn't constitute life. It's willful ignorance for the sake of political expediency, at best, and the last thing you can ascribe to such thinking is "progress."

I am not making this up.  A New York judge dismissed a lawsuit by the Nonhuman Rights Project to grant personhood to two chimpanzees, named Hercules and Leo. This isn't the first attempt to grant "human" status to chimps: last year a judge threw out a similar request for a chimp named Tommy.  But the worst part isn't the fact that self-hating humans keep trying to elevate soulless primates and give them equal status with lawyers--it's the judge's reaction.  State Supreme Court Justice Barbara Jaffe wrote this: "Efforts to extend legal rights to chimpanzees are thus understandable; some day they may even...

Regarding the Instruction Dignitas PersonaeAim In recent years, biomedical research has made great strides, opening new possibilities for the treatment of disease, but also giving rise to serious questions which had not been directly treated in the Instruction Donum vitae (22 February 1987).  A new Instruction, which is dated 8 September 2008, the Feast of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, seeks to provide some responses to these new bioethical questions, as these have been the focus of expectations and concerns in large sectors of society.  In this way, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith seeks both...

I’ve been on campus at the University of Central Florida this week with a team of volunteers, debating university students on the issue of abortion. One mark of our generation seems to come up in many of my conversations: An ignorance of history. “He who does not know the past,” John G. Diefenbaker once noted, “can never understand the present, and he certainly can do nothing for the future.” A prescient statement—in regards to abortion, we are destroying the future, child by butchered child.Time and time again, students bring up the same tired arguments to support abortion. Once you’ve established...

Unborn baby a 10 weeks Seven years ago, a baby girl (who cannot be named for legal reasons) was born to a 19 year old mother who had drunk heavily throughout her pregnancy, despite warnings from healthcare workers that her drinking could damage her baby. This girl and, indirectly, her mother, are now making headlines. The girl was badly harmed by her mothers drinking. She now has Foetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD), which has lead to retarded growth, facial abnormalities, intellectual impairment and other major complications. For the last five years her Local Authority has tried to secure Criminal Injuries...