Sometimes imprecise language used in everyday situations can have deadly implications if taken to their logical conclusion. As the parents of a one-and-a-half year old, we’ve heard people say, “She’s becoming such a little person”—or when she was in her first weeks of life we’d hear, “She almost looks like a little person!” What’s the problem with that? The problem is that “personhood” is a non-degreed property.
Sounds pretty philosophical, right? It’s actually not as difficult as it sounds. A property of a substance is either degreed or non-degreed. Examples of a “degreed property” would be “temperature” and “weight.” Both of these come in degrees, in variations.
A “non-degreed” property is something that either you have or you don’t have. “Existence” and “pregnant” would be non-degreed.
The key is that “personhood” is not something that comes in degrees—it’s something you either have or don’t have. And while not every person is a human (e.g., God the Father, God the Holy Spirit, angels), every human is a person. There is no such thing as a human who is not a person.
Quibbling with words? Hardly. This false distinction between “being human” and “being a person” is at the heart of many of the most contentious ethical debates today. For example, abortion is justified on the grounds that while it may involve the death of a human being, it does not involve killing a person. The logic here is both deadly and wrong.
