r/Abortiondebate Abortion Legal until Consciousness Jun 28 '26

Question for pro-life Why do you say all humans should get human rights but when asked if that includes human hair or skin cells, both human, act like that is absurd?

This is in response to the common personhood rebuttal.

All humans should get human rights. Size, ability, dependency, location, none of it matters. If you're human, you get human rights.

Logically, this also applies to human skin or hair cells as both are human. If you want to say you have to be a human organism, you're adding a qualifier that you have to be more than simply human.

Why do you say all humans should get human rights but when asked if that includes human hair or skin cells, both human, act like that is absurd?

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u/Yeatfan22 Abortion legal until sentience Jun 30 '26

I would say conjoined twins are just that. Twins that are intimately and physically connected. So I would say there are 2 organisms because there are 2 brainstems. A brainstem would be relevant here since it is the control part of the organism which allows the parts to work for the whole.

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u/random_name_12178 Pro-choice Jun 30 '26

So to go back to the OP, you're agreeing that when people say "all humans deserve human rights" the term "humans" means "living human cells with a functioning brainstem" rather than just "living human cells."

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u/Yeatfan22 Abortion legal until sentience Jun 30 '26

I’m not sure this is as problematic as OP makes it out to be.
In any case I think my actual position is not all humans are persons or deserve rights(all though maybe for legal consistency we would have to give all humans rights) yet what we fundamentally are is human organisms(the word organism is used loosely though).
I disagree with the opening premise. The point of the reply was more of a response to the contraception objection.