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(Editor’s Note: We first published this in 2010 but the issues are still up to date. The current Supreme Court has reversed Roe v. Wade and placed the issue into the hands of the states. But is the question one of personal choice and bodily autonomy or human rights? Should all humans have human rights, or just those that governments decree be persons worth human rights?)
The Washington Times headline read, “Clinton pushes Vietnam on human rights progress” and the fifth paragraph down explained:
“The government of Vietnam’s desire to reap the benefits of the global economy must be matched by efforts to respect comprehensive human rights,” a bipartisan group of 19 members of Congress wrote to Clinton on July 15.
This was an interesting paragraph in the article. It also helped to begin crystallizing something I have been thinking about. Do humans have rights solely based on being human? Rather than simply making an assertion I decided to put the question to an organization that specializes in addressing human rights violations, Amnesty International. I emailed them and asked:
There seems to be some confusion when using the term phrase “human rights”. Do you mean by this that humans have rights based solely on being human? If a nation decides that a human is not legally a person and therefore has no rights, for only persons have rights, is that something you affirm?
The question is fairly simple and straightforward. Do humans have rights because they are human or are there some other criteria for protecting rights? Perhaps a human has no rights because the lawmakers used some arbitrary criteria to define personhood and then only protect the rights of those who are legally a person. In this scenario non-persons, human or not, do not have any legal rights nor are deserving of protection. I received a response in less than 24 hours:
Thank you for your interest in Amnesty International and the work that we do.
I’m unaware of the confusion that you mention.
Human rights are those which all humans should be entitled to, regardless of legislation introduced by an individual country that may undermine any of these.
I do not understand your differentiation between people and humans, but I hope that this goes some way to answer your question.
I have spoken with others about this question recently and have watched as they also short-circuited and changed the parameters of the question from “person” to “people.” There is an important distinction here. The word “people” is used interchangeably with “human” whereas “person” is a legal designation. For example, a human or a corporation may be legally a person. Now, writing as an Evangelical I believe that person and human are also interchangeable. I responded back:
Thank you for your timely response and clear answer. The confusion wasn’t between “people” and “human” but between “person” and “human.” For example, in the United States, when slavery was legal, no one denied that slaves were human. However, in the eyes of the law, they were not “persons.” Several state legislatures and the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed this position.1The non-slave states recognized them as persons while the slave states wanted them to be counted as persons for the purposes of increasing legislative representatives, but in all other respects, the slaves classified as property having no personal rights or autonomy. The Three-Fifths Compromise explains, “After a contentious debate, the compromise that was finally agreed upon-of counting “all other persons” [slaves] as only three-fifths of their actual numbers” Therefore, even though they were human but not persons, they had no rights or protections under the law. They were simply property and could be cared for and protected or beaten, sold, dismembered, and even killed without legal reprisal since they were not persons and had no rights. This classification was based on the arbitrary criteria of skin color.
Currently, preborn humans are legally classified as non-persons based on the arbitrary criteria of geography. They are living inside the womb vs. outside the womb. Based on these arbitrary criteria state legislatures and the U.S. Supreme Court do not extend “personhood” and the attendant legal rights and protections afforded “persons” until a geographical change occurs from inside the womb to outside the womb. Even though human, they are property and can be cared for and nurtured until they make the geographical change, or they can be dismembered, burned to death with saline, or even have their brains vacuumed out a few centimeters away from a full geographical change since they are property and not persons even though human. As long as this arbitrary classification stands, I am not really sure on what basis someone could say that slavery was wrong or in the case of other nations if those nations are abusing humans who have been legally classified as non-persons on what basis they could be charged with human rights violations? In the U.S., legally, persons have rights, humans do not.
Now I am not sure how they will respond. They may even choose to ignore this question at this point.2It has been fourteen years and so far Amnesty International has not responded. It may be by now that only do they not know what a person is but not what a woman is either After all, if they affirm that the law can use any arbitrary criteria to determine a legal definition of personhood which excludes certain humans from protection, there is really no basis on which to say slavery was wrong. Slavery was legal because legally the slaves were not fully “persons” even though they were human. We could say that it would be wrong to own slaves in the United States today but that is only because the law has changed and eliminated the skin color criteria not because blacks are any more human than were their ancestors.
Other nations that commit so-called human rights violations may not be doing anything wrong if this arbitrary criterion is the measure. They may simply choose a different set of criteria but since the criteria is arbitrary it doesn’t matter because it is the criteria their government has chosen. North Korea, Vietnam, China, and others may have legally defined those who are being abused as non-persons. If that is so, what right do we as a nation have to try to force our arbitrary definition onto other nations and cultures? After all, our current arbitrary definition is, as I pointed out to Amnesty International, based on geography. A human in the womb is not a person but once they make a move of a few inches from inside the womb to outside the womb, the new location makes them legally persons and affords them protection under the law. If the arbitrary criteria above are false and humans deserve protection solely on the basis of being human that changes how we view the issue of being pro-choice vs. pro-life. Dr. Seuss might say, humans, are human, “No matter how small.”3See “SLED: A Simple Way to Talk with Those Who Are Prochoice About the Personhood of the Unborn“ Preborn humans are small but human nonetheless. If humanness and personhood are interchangeable terms, then the small preborn humans deserve protection. If these are not interchangeable but one is purely legal and arbitrary (person) while the other biological, then we can no longer view slavery as having been wrong in the past and should abandon any attempt at correcting human rights violations in other nations who have simply chosen a different set of arbitrary criteria.
I will be interested to see the response from Amnesty International if they don’t choose to ignore me.Ω
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Don,
This is genius!
Great use of reason to convey truth.
John MacArthur, commenting on Hebrews 11:1 “faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen,” said that this verse should not be construed to mean the Bible is evidence of things that didn’t happen. On the contrary, the Bible is evidence of things we didn’t see. Your reasoning is evidence, not of something that isn’t there in human personhood, but of a human person that is definitely there but that we do not yet see (although ultrasounds have taken care of that). I’m sure Amnesty International is scratching their heads.
I will be eagerly waiting to hear how they responded. Very good letter!
Greatr article. i wonder what the Supreme Court would say on this? This is “Perry Mason” stuff!
No, they never responded back. I was not overly surprised. Among those with certain worldviews, “human rights” are not fixed but fluid and change when they wish to exclude certain humans from protection.
quote. In the Holy Scriptures
there are many cases of civil disobedience, but it was never intended to force a godless society to follow biblical principles. There are no biblical examples to support today’s “Christian activism.” Christ “suffered for
us, leaving us an example so that you may follow in his footsteps.” He harshly and repeatedly rebuked Israel’s false religious leaders, but he never spoke out – not once – against the injustice of Roman civil power! o. It is hypocrisy on the part of the church to protest against the sins of the world, while it tolerates and even worships in its ranks those who preach a false gospel and are enemies of the cross of Christ. . What if Noah, instead of building an ark, tried to reform society! TBC
“Ethics” would only ever be an endless cipher from man’s reasoning ability, if not for the fear of Almighty God.
Might truly makes right.
Almighty God is “all-righty” God. And He is coming to judge the living and the dead. So heed His word.
Neither the slave or his master chose his parents or his Providence since birth. That is why both master and slave must be humble before their Maker.
“Slavery” is not sin. The things depraved sinners do to their slaves–that is sin. Using slavery as a cover for breaking the 3rd and 6th commandments, because the slaves can’t or won’t return “eye-for-eye”/”tooth-for-tooth”, is what depraved sinners do.
The “slavery is sin” idea is part of the ethical head-fakery endemic to our time, and it is always grounded in unbiblical rationality, not “thus says the LORD.”
Is that really an “either/or” issue?
Genesis 7:6 says, “Noah was six hundred years old when the flood of waters came upon the earth.” (ESV).
I rather suspect that Noah may have indeed made at least some efforts to reform society in the years before God’s ark finally set sail.
“But you, beloved, building yourselves up in your most holy faith and praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in the love of God, waiting for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ that leads to eternal life. And have mercy on those who doubt; save others by snatching them out of the fire; to others show mercy with fear, hating even the garment stained by the flesh.” (Jude 20-23, ESV).
This article was posted in 2010.
I am with the other poster. I would like to know if Amnesty International responded to your post. What did they have to say at that point? Were they willing to even respond?
It is interesting that the Pro-Choice group uses the argument that the fetus is not a person, but becomes a person once they are born. They never state that the fetus is a human. It is interesting that they use the ‘slight-of-hand’ to make their argument.
No, Amnesty International didn’t respond to the question. I think they are in a precarious position. If they do recognize that the unborn is a human than they would have to fight for their human rights but they would also lose a great deal of revenue from those who give the pretense of fighting for human rights in other nations but want to continue killing the preborn as property if they so choose.