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WHAT IS PERSONHOOD?
• Personhood is the legal recognition of a human being's full status as a human person that applies to all human beings; irrespective of age, health, function, physical dependency or method of reproduction; including their preborn offspring; at every stage of their biological development.
• Personhood is the final chapter of the civil rights movement. It proposes commonsense values for otherwise convoluted jurisprudence.
What you should know
• The personhood movement seeks to restore the original intent of the Constitution by defining every human being as a "person" from his or her biological beginning. Although personhood is not a new concept, the personhood movement that has recently been reignited, is spreading quickly and gaining momentum.
• The need to amend the Constitutions (Federal and State) by clarifying the definition of personhood can be explained by visiting a landmark Supreme Court decision. In 1965, the United States Supreme Court, in Griswold v. Connecticut, suddenly found the "right to privacy" in sexual matters in the "emanations” from “penumbras" (shadows) allegedly found in the Constitution.
Griswold v. Connecticut made human beings property again. Human beings can be owned in test tubes and wombs. They can be used involuntarily as test objects, destroyed for their stem cells, genetically modified, cloned, dissected and stripped of their dignity.
This so-called "right to privacy" was invoked by the Supreme Court in 1973, in Roe v. Wade, to decriminalize abortion in the United States.
Sample Amendment Content
Purpose:
To establish that legal personhood is granted to all human beings in the United States, from the beginning of their biological development.
Section 1:
The right to life is the paramount and most fundamental right of a person.
Section 2:
With respect to the right to life guaranteed to persons by the fifth and 14th articles of amendment to the Constitution, the word "person" applies to all human beings; irrespective of age, health, function, physical dependency or method of reproduction; including their unborn offspring; at every stage of their biological development.
Section 3:
Congress and the several States, including territories under United States control, shall have concurrent power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
Section 4: Definitions
Human being: Any organism, including the single-cell human embryo, irrespective of the method of reproduction, who possesses a genome specific for and consistent with an individual member of the human species.
Human genome: The total amount of nuclear and extra-nuclear DNA genetic material that constitutes an organism as an individual member of the human species—including the single-cell human embryo.
Human embryo: The term is used to define all human beings from the beginning of the embryonic period of their biological development through eight weeks; irrespective of age, health, function, physical dependency or method of reproduction; whether in vivo or in vitro.
Human fetus: The term is used to define all human beings from the beginning of the fetal period of their biological development (the beginning of nine weeks) through birth; irrespective of age, health, function, physical dependency or method of reproduction; whether in vivo or in vitro.
Personhood: The legal recognition of a human being's full status as a human person that applies to all human beings; irrespective of age, health, function, physical dependency or method of reproduction; including their unborn offspring; at every stage of their biological development.
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