Mississippi Prop 26 - What is a Human?

[Editor's Note:   also see http://bobhurt.blogspot.com/2011/11/with-respect-to-my-what-is-human-scott.html]

Proponents of Mississippi’s 8 Nov 2011 ballot measure “Proposition 26” seek to define the term person to “include every human being from the moment of fertilization.”  The proposition impacts a pregnant woman’s access to health care, including abortion. The American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists released an opposition statement calling the proposition “vague and overly broad”.

I don’t believe personhood begins till the Heavenly Father bestows the personality upon the child, whether that happens in our out of the womb.  I believe the seven

adjutant mind spirits must first become functional in the mind so that personality bestowal will have meaning and function.  The spirits go by the names

·         intuition,

·         understanding,

·         courage,

·         knowledge,

·         counsel,

·         worship, and

·         wisdom

Personality has qualities including

·         Self-consciousness – awareness of awareness,

·         Ability to exercise moral will – to choose between right and wrong,

·         Ability to communicate thoughts, ideas, and ideals to other persons,

·         Ability to desire to do good to others – to love, and

·         Ability to crave to know God and to grow to know him,

I do not know how much of the brain must function, nor in what way, before the adjutant mind spirits can function in association with it.  I imagine it must become sufficiently developed for the baby to seek nourishment before the Father bestows personality upon the genetic entity.

The typical child does not exercise moral will (begin to exhibit wisdom) until the fifth year of life.  So, I don’t believe minimal personhood requires full exercise of the prerogatives of personality.  Since premature babies can survive with care and nourishment, I believe it safe to say that a baby does not have to experience natural birth in order to become human. 

However, if a baby cannot survive outside the womb at some age with personality prerogatives intact, regardless of the care given, and become a normal human, then that baby does not have the requisite characteristics of a human being with real personality.  And, neither government nor people should seek to keep it alive if the mother dies while pregnant. Nor should government confer personhood status on such an entity.

I believe we should exercise common sense in determining when human life starts, such as by the above factors.  I do not believe conception constitutes the beginning of human life, nor that a human zygote or embryo constitutes a “human.”

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