Can People Who Are Not People Have Rights?

Are funerals for the survivors or for the dead? Are baby showers for the newborn or for the parents? Living wills are legally enforceable contracts that carry out the wishes of the deceased. In other words, they are burdens placed on those living by people who no longer exist. Arguments in favor of environmental standards and protection often include the rhetoric of preserving the world for “future generations,” a group of people who, also, do not exist. By no means am I implying that adherence to the terms of wills and/or protecting the environment are unimportant actions. In fact, they serve vital roles in society. But I do ask, why?

Thomas Hobbes argued that we have a right to all things. John Locke argued that we have natural rights to life, liberty and property, and laws exist to protect these rights. Similarly, Jean-Jacque Rousseau argued that we possess civil rights because we give up certain natural rights in order to receive protection in the form of laws and government. John Stuart Mill joins this choir to argue that the government may only infringe on our rights when we harm the liberty of others. All these classic conceptions of rights apply to the rights of living people: indeed, only living people can claim a right to life itself. The way we normally conceptualize adherence to rights is by referring to refrain from infringing on the rights of others.

However, we seem to have an understanding that when our elderly relative asks us to bury her in her family plot, this is something that not only would be nice to do, but that we are obligated or obliged to do. It is our duty. But how far does this duty extend? Let’s say that burying her in the family plot will cost a fortune. It’s not clear that we are necessarily obligated to fulfill the wishes of the dead that force us to go broke and thus harm us, the living. Furthermore, at this point, does it even make sense to ask if we owe this duty to the person we need to bury, a person who no longer exists?

Similarly, it is severely looked down upon for women to smoke or drink while pregnant because of the negative consequences it will have on the resulting child’s life. While I am not disputing that smoking and drinking are in fact irresponsible acts and it is in the woman’s interest to maximize the health of her unborn child, it seems problematic to frame the discussion in the interest of the child. Indeed, the child will not suffer because of any action the mother has done to him because that action was performed before he even existed. While I do not think it is morally permissible to abort a fetus in the third trimester, I also do not think that the fetus has the same moral status as that of a human, and thus does not possess the rights of a living human. Thus, it’s not clear that the harm that the mother has done is to herself or to her unborn child.

If interested in this idea of personhood of the unborn, check out this post by Tanya, my fellow colleague here at Consider.

By: Naomi Scheinerman

(Photo courtesy of sxc.hu)