Taking personhood back

The question at hand is whether the law will protect every human being as a legal person. The 14th amendment to the Constitution states in part, “nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” The fact that the law does not protect children in the womb from abortion is rooted in the words of the 1973 Roe vs. Wade decision, “the word person as used in the Fourteenth Amendment does not include the unborn.”

Ironically, eight months before Roe vs. Wade, personhood was also discussed in relation to protecting the environment. In the decision, Sierra Club vs. Morton , Justice Douglas argued the following words in his dissent:

“The ordinary corporation is a “person” for purposes of the adjudicatory process. So it should be as respects valleys, alpine meadows, rivers, lakes, estuaries, beaches, ridges, groves of trees, swampland, or even air that feels the destructive pressures of modern technology and modern life...With all respect, the problem is to make certain that the inanimate objects, which are the very core of America’s beauty, have spokesmen before they are destroyed...”

Eight months later, he ruled with the majority in Roe vs. Wade that “the word person does not include the unborn.” Washington Post