{"id":57459,"date":"2014-12-26T10:56:43","date_gmt":"2014-12-26T15:56:43","guid":{"rendered":"\/news\/?p=57459"},"modified":"2014-12-26T08:36:50","modified_gmt":"2014-12-26T13:36:50","slug":"the-end-of-human-rights","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/the-end-of-human-rights\/","title":{"rendered":"The end of human rights?"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>

According to a recent report<\/span><\/a> by Reuters, a court in Argentina has ruled that Sandra, an orangutan living in a Buenos Aires zoo, is a \u201cnon-human person.\u201d The court determined that Sandra\u2019s internment in the zoo is therefore an unlawful violation of her fundamental rights. According to Paul Buompadre, the lawyer representing Sandra, \u201c[t]his opens the way not only for other Great Apes, but also for other sentient beings which are unfairly and arbitrarily deprived of their liberty in zoos, circuses, water parks and scientific laboratories.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now in many countries, including the United States, members of the species Homo sapiens<\/em> are not granted legal rights until they are born. The landmark Supreme Court ruling Roe v. Wade<\/em> declared, \u201cThe unborn have never been recognized in the law as persons in the whole sense.\u201d In other words, the law considers a fetus belonging to the species Homo sapiens<\/em> a \u201chuman non-person.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to this logic, the term \u201chuman rights\u201d is a misnomer. If a \u201cnon-human person\u201d possesses these rights and a \u201chuman non-person\u201d does not possess these rights, then the determining factor is clearly personhood, not humanity. Thus, individuals do not have \u201chuman rights\u201d; they have \u201cperson rights.\u201d The U.N. Commission on Human Rights has been misnamed.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

We should notice, however, that replacing \u201chuman rights\u201d with \u201cperson rights\u201d is no small change.<\/p>\n

The term \u201chuman\u201d is clearly defined. Every member of the species Homo sapiens<\/em> is a human. Therefore, the humanity or non-humanity of an individual is a scientific fact; it is not open to debate.<\/p>\n

The term \u201cperson,\u201d on the other hand, is not clearly defined. For example, Sandra has been deemed a person in Argentina because she has attained some unspecified level of cognitive function. However, in the United States, the personhood of a fetus is not determined by cognitive function at all. The law currently considers a premature infant a person, while an older fetus at full term is not deemed a person, despite the fact that the fetus is more developed than the infant and thus has greater cognitive function.\u00a0The criterion is not cognitive function, but birth.<\/p>\n

Therefore, unlike the\u00a0designation “human,” which is entirely objective, the designation “person” varies from country to country.\u00a0One country may\u00a0declare that orangutans are persons;\u00a0another may\u00a0declare that\u00a0orangutans are not persons.\u00a0One country may\u00a0declare\u00a0that fetuses are persons;\u00a0another may\u00a0declare that fetuses are not persons. One country may declare that infants are persons; another may side with scholars such as Alberto Giubilini\u00a0and Francesca Minerva, who recently gave this opinion<\/span><\/a> in the prestigious Journal of Medical Ethics<\/em>:<\/p>\n

Both a fetus and a newborn certainly are human beings and potential persons, but neither is a \u2018person\u2019 in the sense of \u2018subject of a moral right to life\u2019\u2026.Merely being human is not in itself a reason for ascribing someone a right to life.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The notion of human rights is revolutionary precisely\u00a0because it places the individual above the state.\u00a0The notion of person rights, on the other hand, is not revolutionary at all. On this view, individuals have rights only because the state has deemed them persons. In other words, individuals have rights only because the state has decided to grant them rights.\u00a0Thus, the state remains the final authority.<\/p>\n

The shift from “human rights” to “person rights” is therefore not a progressive move toward a more enlightened understanding of justice; it is simply a return to the old view that the state has absolute power.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

According to a recent report by Reuters, a court in Argentina has ruled that Sandra, an orangutan living in a Buenos Aires zoo, is a \u201cnon-human person.\u201d The court determined that Sandra\u2019s internment in the zoo is therefore an unlawful violation of her fundamental rights. According to Paul Buompadre, the lawyer representing Sandra, \u201c[t]his opens […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":68,"featured_media":57495,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\nThe end of human rights? - Live Action News<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/the-end-of-human-rights\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The end of human rights? - Live Action News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"According to a recent report by Reuters, a court in Argentina has ruled that Sandra, an orangutan living in a Buenos Aires zoo, is a \u201cnon-human person.\u201d The court determined that Sandra\u2019s internment in the zoo is therefore an unlawful violation of her fundamental rights. 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