Now that so many Republicans are distancing themselves from the embryo and IVF issue, it's important to remember than 125 of them in the House, including the current speaker, co-sponsored H.R. 431: a bill that said an embryo is a human with full rights.
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To implement equal protection under the 14th article of amendment to the Constitution for the right to life of each born and preborn human person.
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,
SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.
This Act may be cited as the “Life at Conception Act”.
SEC. 2. RIGHT TO LIFE.
To implement equal protection for the right to life of each born and preborn human person, and pursuant to the duty and authority of the Congress, including Congress’ power under article I, section 8, to make necessary and proper laws, and Congress’ power under section 5 of the 14th article of amendment to the Constitution of the United States, the Congress hereby declares that the right to life guaranteed by the Constitution is vested in each human being. However, nothing in this Act shall be construed to authorize the prosecution of any woman for the death of her unborn child.
SEC. 3. DEFINITIONS.
For purposes of this Act:
(1) HUMAN PERSON; HUMAN BEING.—The terms “human person” and “human being” include each and every member of the species homo sapiens at all stages of life, including the moment of fertilization, cloning, or other moment at which an individual member of the human species comes into being.
(2) STATE.—The term “State” used in the 14th article of amendment to the Constitution of the United States and other applicable provisions of the Constitution includes the District of Columbia, the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, and each other territory or possession of the United States.
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how did people in the western world come to love pets
It hasn't always been that way .. perhaps it is an imported idea.
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Norton analyses human–animal relationships in Europe, Greater Amazonia (the Caribbean and lowland South America) and Mesoamerica. Many Indigenous peoples of the Americas consider all beings to be interconnected and permeable. By attempting to think like the animals they hunted, and by wearing the creatures’ pelts and consuming the meat, Indigenous people could take on some of the “beauty and power” of these living beings. By contrast, in Judeo-Christian thought, humans are distinct from and superior to animals.
Norton identifies four ways in which people interacted with animals. In Europe, through hunting and husbandry, and in the Americas, through predation and ‘familiarization’ — a process of feeding and taming individual animals that came and went freely. Familiarized animals were never eaten in Greater Amazonia, but were sometimes consumed during Mesoamerican rituals. Each way of life shaped how people categorized animals and the extent to which animals were considered “fellow subjects with desires, emotions, and even reason”.
In Europe, hunters distinguished vassal animals, such as hunting dogs, horses and falcons, from prey animals, particularly deer and boar. Nonetheless, for a hunt to be successful, hunters had to recognize that their prey had minds with needs, feelings, experiences and motives. Killing prey animals did not require their objectification. But the Christian view of a human–animal divide did provide a basis for livestock husbandry, a practice that requires animals to be seen merely as objects.
The importance of husbandry went beyond nutrition, livelihoods and products, such as clothing. By objectifying animals, people created a “distance between those who owned and managed living animals and those who taxed and consumed their corpses”. With the rise of slaughterhouses — separate from butcher’s shops and required to be outside city limits — consumers in the fifteenth century were disconnected from animal rearing and killing.
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06:34 in General Commentary, history | Permalink | Comments (0)