When personhood and human life truly begin has been a longstanding ethical and legal debate. There are two primary philosophical viewpoints – one that personhood arises at the moment of conception when the egg is fertilized, and the other that it develops gradually during fetal development marked by certain milestones. Those who believe personhood begins at conception often ground this belief in religious teachings or the view that even a single-celled zygote contains complete human DNA and the potential for life. From this perspective, abortion at any stage would be unacceptable as it terminates a person with moral status.
On the other hand, others point to fetal developmental markers like brain activity, viability outside the womb, or live birth itself, to argue that personhood is a process that unfolds incrementally. Under this framework, early abortions before those markers may be ethically permissible, while later abortions become more philosophically fraught. The legal and political landscape around abortion rights has shifted dramatically since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022. This shift has cleared the way for states to grant full legal personhood to embryos from conception.
A striking example came in February 2024, when the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that the state’s law protecting “unborn children” from chemical endangerment applies to fertilized eggs before implantation. This ruling made Alabama the first state to recognize constitutional personhood at the moment of fertilization legally. However, extending such inviolable personhood rights to fertilized eggs or embryos creates thorny moral contradictions and unforeseen consequences that must be grappled with.
If these embryos have full personhood rights, destroying any of them would be ethically equivalent to abortion and potentially subject to criminal consequences.
Take the case of in-vitro fertilization (IVF), where multiple embryos are routinely created, frozen, and often discarded if deemed non-viable or not intended for implantation. If these embryos have full personhood rights, destroying any of them would be ethically equivalent to abortion and potentially subject to criminal consequences. Now, Alabama lawmakers have quickly passed a bill protecting IVF practices while still restricting abortion access, which is blatant hypocrisy. So, the real loser here is a woman’s fundamental right to bodily autonomy. The idea is that no person can be compelled to allow their body to sustain another life against their will, even if that other life is granted personhood. Forced pregnancy violates this core tenet of individual liberty and consent.
Even more disturbingly, the logical extension of defining life at conception would necessitate investigating tens of thousands of pregnancies that end naturally in miscarriage each year. With estimates as high as 30% of pregnancies result in miscarriage due to genetic issues or health complications, authorities could be empowered to interrogate and potentially prosecute any woman whose pregnancy tragically fails for potential fetal harm. Extending full personhood at conception opens Pandora’s box of philosophical contradictions, threats to reproductive freedoms, and unconscionable invasions of privacy masquerading as “life protection.” It underscores the critical need for nuanced policies on this complex issue that account for all implications while preserving essential civil liberties.
The IVF Contradiction
The practice of in-vitro fertilization (IVF) lies at the heart of one of the most glaring contradictions in granting full legal personhood to embryos from the moment of conception. During the IVF process, eggs are retrieved from the prospective mother and fertilized with sperm in a lab setting. This practice typically results in multiple embryos being created. Those embryos are then monitored, so only the healthiest ones are selected for potential implantation into the woman’s uterus in hopes of achieving a successful pregnancy.
However, it is routine for some of the embryos created during IVF to be discarded or destroyed, often because they are deemed non-viable or not intended for implantation and future use. Excess embryos may be donated for research, kept frozen indefinitely, or allowed to succumb if they fail to develop properly. Therefore, if one subscribes to the belief that a fertilized egg or embryo constitutes a person with full constitutional rights, then the intentional destruction of any embryos during IVF would be ethically indistinguishable from abortion, the termination of a life with moral status.
However, many of the same conservative lawmakers and activists working to ban or severely limit abortion access across multiple U.S. states believe they should legally protect IVF practices, which include the ability to discard non-viable embryos created in the process. A stark example of hypocrisy where legislators propose laws that would grant constitutional rights to embryos from conception while explicitly exempting IVF procedures that result in the destruction of embryos deemed “unfit.” If the state is prepared to grant embryos personhood protections, how can it morally justify allowing the routine disposal of embryos during IVF based solely on their perceived fitness or utility?
The intention to have a child or terminate a pregnancy is not the real issue if the results are the same: a discarded human fertilized egg.
This ethical disconnect has forced an uncomfortable reckoning. Either both IVF embryo destruction and abortion are morally wrong acts of killing entitled persons, or they are both legitimate practices respectful of reproductive autonomy. Attempting to legally uphold such a double standard only underscores the contradictions and complications in granting personhood at conception while carving out exemptions based on intent. The intention to have a child or terminate a pregnancy is not the real issue if the results are the same: a discarded human fertilized egg. For any consistent ethical framework to take shape, policymakers who endow embryos with personhood must be prepared to reckon with the full moral implications of IVF embryo practices rather than creating carve-outs to suit certain reproductive choices over others.
What About Consent?
One of the most philosophically rigorous arguments, in defense of abortion rights, centers on the inviolable principle of bodily autonomy. The core premise is that no person can be compelled to allow their body to sustain another life against their will, even if that other life is granted full personhood status. This stance holds that even if we accept the controversial view that a fertilized egg, embryo, or fetus deserves constitutional rights as a person, those rights cannot automatically override the bodily autonomy rights of the woman gestating that potential person within her own body. Forced pregnancy constitutes an unconscionable violation of personal sovereignty over one’s physical self.
The ethical maxim “no person can use another person’s body without consent” resonates strongly with safeguarding against subjugation and protecting the freedom to make intensely personal decisions free from state coercion. To disregard this principle opens the door to other unprecedented invasions of individual liberty in the name of “saving lives.” For example, one could extend this logic to mandate organ donation or blood transfusions to preserve existing human life, an outcome incompatible with just governance over a free people. The abortion issue represents a specific application of bodily self-determination that any society claiming to respect rights should aim to protect.
Notably, adherence to this ethical maxim avoids getting bogged down in the complicated debate over when exactly personhood begins during fetal development. Even if one believes a zygote or embryo qualifies as a living person deserving of rights, a woman retains autonomy over allowing her body to sustain that person’s potential life.
There have been unsettling examples of this principle being violated after overturning Roe v Wade. Brittany Watts was charged with abuse of a corpse after having a miscarriage on the toilet at her home—a fifth-degree felony punishable by up to a year in prison and a $2,500 fine. Despite plausibly carrying an unviable pregnancy, she was treated as potentially perpetrating an illegal abortion, highlighting the grim realities when fetal personhood supersedes bodily autonomy.
Such cases will inevitably become more common if women’s consent over the use of their bodies in pregnancy is legally disregarded. It heralds a slippery slope toward dystopian scenarios where intimately personal reproductive choices are seized by the state in the name of “protecting life” – with bodily autonomy forfeited to those claiming jurisdiction over when personhood status applies. Preserving this cornerstone of individual liberty is thus paramount in formulating ethically sound abortion policies, regardless of one’s position on personhood. What other freedoms could be considered inviolable without consent over one’s body?
The Miscarriage Investigation Conundrum
One of the most disturbing and unintended consequences of granting full personhood rights to fertilized eggs and embryos from the moment of conception is the alarming potential for miscarriages to be criminalized and subject to invasive government investigations. Medical data shows that somewhere between 15 to 20% of all pregnancies naturally end in miscarriage before 20 weeks, often due to genetic abnormalities, health complications, or other biological factors outside the woman’s control. These tragic occurrences are already enormously difficult and painful experiences without the risk of prosecutorial scrutiny.
However, if society fully equates a fertilized egg with a living person before it is even implanted, then logically, any failed pregnancy could be treated as the equivalent of involuntary manslaughter or negligent homicide in need of being legally validated. This new standard would empower states, to interrogate and potentially prosecute any woman who endures the heartbreak of a miscarriage, to ascertain if any wrongdoing contributed to the loss of that newly established “life.” The implications represent an unconscionable overreach into private medical data, personal privacy, and the grieving process itself. Every instance of a pregnancy failing to reach full term could warrant a criminal investigation, an exercise injecting massive emotional trauma upon women already dealing with profound loss.
It becomes evident that extending constitutional rights to fertilized eggs creates untenable logical contradictions and ethical pitfalls.
Taken to its logical extreme, consistently enforced embryonic personhood could result in countless narratives where women are unduly interrogated or arrested on mere suspicion during their moment of greatest vulnerability. Miscarriages occurring naturally or due to external factors like illness or prescription medications may no longer receive the benefit of the doubt. In a civilized society that values human dignity, privacy, and equality under the law, treating the heartbreaking reality of miscarriage as a prosecutable crime represents an unacceptable assault on fundamental decencies.
Let’s Wrap it Up.
In examining the complex issue of when life and personhood begin, it becomes evident that extending constitutional rights to fertilized eggs creates untenable logical contradictions and ethical pitfalls. The conservative movement to grant embryos personhood while simultaneously defending practices like IVF that routinely discard embryos is a blatant hypocrisy that undermines any claims to moral consistency.
How can the same movement argue that embryos deserve inviolable rights but then carve out exemptions that allow their destruction based on perceived fitness or utility as part of the IVF process? Such a stance is not motivated by profound reverence for potential life but rather an authoritarian desire to seize control over women’s reproductive freedoms.
Moreover, the notion that women can be forced to carry pregnancies to term against their will represents a gross violation of the bedrock principles of bodily autonomy and consent that any free society should safeguard. No person should be conscripted as an incubator by the state based on someone else’s subjective definition of when personhood applies. Perhaps most abhorrent is the inevitable future in which women who tragically suffer miscarriages are treated as criminal suspects, subjected to invasive interrogations about their private medical circumstances on the mere accusation that an embryo’s hypothetical personhood rights were violated. Reducing such intimate anguish to a prosecutable matter strips away human dignity and exemplifies the demeaning disregard for women’s equal citizenship under the law.
The conservative movement’s purported desire to “protect life” by endowing embryos with personhood cannot be separated from its blatant willingness to inflict immense suffering upon living women and families through selective applications of these same principles. It is an unethical and oppressive sham deserving of public rebuke. Confronting such logical contradictions and abuse of power is crucial as the personhood debate rages on. Policies must be established that preserve essential civil liberties while addressing all potential implications, not granting embryos rights that are then selectively ignored or weaponized against half the population. Intellectual consistency and protecting inviolable personal freedoms should be society’s guiding light on this complex issue rather than ideological dogma and subjugation.