A Zygote or a Fetus Is Not a Person

Many anti-choice people will insist that a pregnancy at any stage is a "person" or "human".  This is manifestly untrue.  Let's take a zygote, for example.  

When we think of what a person is we think of certain features, abilities, and characteristics.  A person can move, think,  feel pain, feel pleasurable sensations,  eat,  laugh,  love, hate,  and  make plans for the future (even if the future is only the next few seconds).  By that universally accepted standard a zygote is in no way a person - it can do none of that, it is capable of nothing we think of a person being able to do.  Now I hear some of you angrily insisting a zygote is human and I'll grant you that it's human in the same sense that one of my fingernail clippings is human - it originates from a human,  it is of a human, it is human matter, but it is NOT a human being, it is NOT a person.  A zygote merits no more consideration than a mosquito biting you does,  the destruction of a zygote is no more immoral than the destruction of a mosquito or amoeba,  it feels  no pain, it has no awareness, it is in no practical sense a person.

So, at what point does a pregnancy become a person?  A pregnancy exists on a continuum, at one end definitely not a person and at the other end definitely a person.  Appropriate concern for the living cells in a pregnancy that will become a person also varies on a continuum, from being of a zygote of no concern to a fetus on the verge of birth being a great concern.  At any intermediate stage of development the living cells of a pregnancy are of more or less concern depending on how much of a person it is.   I've had people argue that a zygote can feel pain because "If it's alive it can feel pain!" but there's no truth to that.  If that were true we should be concerned about causing plants pain when we harvest and eat them  - precious few people feel that way.  No,  to feel pain one needs certain features and abilities, nerves to sense and transmit the pain signal and a brain developed enough to perceive it.  A zygote or fetus has none of that, it is incapable of feeling pain.  The ability to feel pain is a benchmark for how much concern we as people should have for a fetus, a fetus capable of feeling pain being of greater concern than one that does not.  

At the beginning of the continuum on the way to becoming a person the abortion of a zygote by the morning after pill is of no ethical concern to a reasonable person.  As the fetus develops we have increasing concern for it and as it nears birth a medically unnecessary abortion becomes completely unethical.

A popular lie amongst Republicans is that healthy fetuses are being aborted a day or two before natural birth would take place or even after natural birth takes place (which is murder).  The truth is third trimester abortions are very,  very rare and the circumstances that lead to one are such that any reasonable person would agree an abortion is the most ethical choice.  No woman in the third trimester of pregnancy wants to have an abortion.  Pregnancies that develop to this point are virtually always wanted pregnancies, or at least one where the woman has decided to give birth.  The only time an abortion is performed in a third trimester is when there is something seriously wrong with the fetus or pregnancy.  The fetus has died or is severely deformed and sure to die shortly after birth or there are serious complications with the pregnancy such that continuing it will likely kill the mother and/or the fetus.  No woman is having a third trimester abortion as a means of birth control and anyone who would lie about this to get your vote would be harmful in a position of power or authority.

Throughout recorded history, and in virtually every society, the social and legal convention has always been that a pregnancy does not become a person until live birth.  There are myriad legal and practical reasons for this and there is no good argument for changing this universal convention.  There's no ethical reason  for  so-called "personhood" laws that absurdly define a zygote a as person,  the entire purpose of such laws is to punish and discourage women who have sex without wanting to get pregnant.