Letter: Pre-humans don’t have the same rights

Monday, Jan. 16, 2006 | 8:27 a.m.

Once again letter writer Timothy Carroll ("Freedom also applies to unborn children," Jan. 12) spouts his radical religious beliefs that a blob of reproductive cells less than an inch long at two months deserves the same freedoms as an adult woman. And he continually calls these cells babies and children and claims they are being murdered. How about being rational?

Cells do not have rights even if they are human cells. He makes a fetish out of a few cells which are plentiful in the human body and most of which get flushed down the toilet anyway. And it's not the "creation of life." Life began once billions of years ago.

Every civilized country in the world defines a human based on the writings of John Locke, the 17th century philosopher who defined a human as a "thinking intelligent being that has reason and reflection and can consider itself as itself, the same thinking thing, in different times and places." Clearly an embryo without a brain or consciousness is pre-human, not human.

A woman has over 200 chances to get pregnant in her life. It is better for the community if she can pick the best time in her life to have her child. A time when she can devote herself and her gifts to give the child the life it deserves.

Children are too important to be unwanted accidents. Mr. Carroll ought to stop trying to control women and start trusting them.

Shirley Braverman

Las Vegas