Why the Personhood Issue Matters

What if every woman had access to medical care and paid maternity leave, if every abused woman were offered a safe refuge, if the prospect of juggling work and childcare were never an issue? What if on [every] level of society we welcomed women with their babies — whether in restaurants and parks, or nursing while delivering a speech in the UN? What if women were empowered from an early age to take possession of and understand our reproductive processes? What if women were taken seriously by medical practitioners? What if there weren’t systemic, institutional, and personal racism driving up the maternal mortality rates for women of color?

What if we let the jury remain out on difficult metaphysical questions about personhood, and instead focused on working for a truly pro-woman, pro-child society?

Thus ends Rebecca Bratten Weiss’ May 16 article, “It’s Time to Move Past the Pro-Life / Pro-Choice Dividing Line.” I should make it clear that I often agree with Bratten Weiss in the substance of what she says even when I sometimes wince or cringe over the manner in which she expresses it. Although she describes herself as an eco-feminist, I don’t believe she’s allowed her secular ideological affiliation or language to carry her beyond the bounds of Catholic orthodoxy. Yet.

But while there’s much in this article I not only agree with but applaud, it becomes apparent as her argument progresses that she doesn’t get why the personhood issue matters.

The personhood argument stems from the language of the Fifth and 14th Amendment “due process” clauses: “… nor shall any person … be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law ….”

A commonsense reading of these clauses would interpret person as synonymous with human and that these provisions apply regardless of age, sex, creed, ethnicity, sexual orientation, citizenship status, or any other demographic category. However, the pro-abortion argument is that the unborn aren’t “persons” within the meaning of these clauses and therefore don’t qualify for their protection. That is, even if we grant the unborn child’s humanity (which many pro-abortion advocates don’t), they still miss some features that distinguish the person from the mere human.

Ergo, personhood — a select club within the human fraternity. Every person is a human, but not every human is a person; some humans are more equal than others.

To create this asymmetrical relationship between humans and persons, you have to have defined markers of personhood. Like the distinctions between races in “race science”, it doesn’t really matter whether there’s a consensus on these markers so long as you’re convinced that 1) “personhood” is a valid concept and 2) the unborn child doesn’t qualify. After all, it didn’t really matter to the seven white males on the Burger Court where the “right of privacy” could be found in the Bill of Rights; it only mattered that they believed it was there and was sufficient to justify a right to abort.

You can even use the ultimate intellectual dodge and call that lack of personhood “obvious.” Because once something’s obvious, it doesn’t need to be explained or defended, does it?

In other words, the pro-abortion advocate superficially lays down the issue of the unborn child’s humanity only to take it back up behind the façade of “personhood.” To be an “un-person” isn’t substantially different from being “non-human” or “subhuman” or “life unworthy of life” (lebensunwertes Leben) because the net result is still that the un-person is unworthy of our most basic human rights. They’re not even personae non grata.

Without the personhood argument, the pro-abortion advocate has a much tougher battle to achieve the moral high ground. The problem is not that the right to life is indefeasible but rather that taking human life is a drastic measure which requires an equally drastic cause for its justification. So long as we consider the unborn protected by the right to life, the pro-abortion advocate is in the unenviable position of trying to convince us that the right to abort takes moral priority over the right to life. Depersonalize the unborn and that obstacle is significantly reduced if not totally removed.

However, if there’s any compelling argument for the equality of women, or gays, or any other vulnerable social group, it must be predicated on the transcendent dignity of the human person (CSDC 132-4; cf. CCC 1929-30) and the equal dignity of all people (CSDC 144-8; cf. CCC 1934-8). In secular terms, we refer back to the “self-evident” truths of the Declaration of Independence “that all men are created equal, that they are endowed … with certain unalienable rights, [and] that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

The personhood argument, like arguments for slavery or racial theory, fundamentally denies human equality by restricting transcendent dignity to an elite class that meets arbitrary standards. Precisely because they’re arbitrary and reflect the biases of the social group in power, the standards can change as power changes hands, potentially making the club of “persons” more exclusive. If simple humanity isn’t enough, why can’t we adopt measures that exclude, say, the gay and transgendered? If we can create one level of exclusion, why not two — a limited “second-class personhood”, like medieval serfdom?

What guarantee can anyone offer that some other interest group can’t redefine personhood for their own purposes? None.

Ideas matter. “Conflict arises,” wrote the late Jesuit philosopher Fr. James V. Schall, “when both sides of an issue realize that something basic is at stake, that our ideas do make a difference” (Catholicism and Intelligence, 148). At their root, all political issues are philosophical issues, and those who discuss them are engaging in philosophy even if they think philosophy is so much time-wasting blather. And it’s hard to find an idea that has caused more human misery, especially over the last two or three centuries, than the belief that humanity can be bifurcated into the rights-worthy and the rights-unworthy.

So no, we can’t leave the jury hung on the personhood question in the hopes that we can find a pragmatic compromise without resolving it. A better approach to building “a truly pro-woman, pro-child society” would be to sell feminists on the fundamental dignity of the human person and the equal dignity of persons as the only secure principles on which we can predicate both the unborn’s right to live and the woman’s right to control her body. Accepting these principles, however, would require the rejection of the spurious distinction between human and person.

To leave the personhood issue suspended is to leave it — and the exclusionary idea behind it — alive to create more misery. That’s why the personhood issue matters.