I've been away for the last 8 hours or so.
I didn't bring up slavery in general over history. I asked a specific question about US legal tradition. You can't dodge it just by saying, "Uh... That's not relevant! Because, uh, because people used to do it differently. So... Yeah."
No, it's not a time. It takes place at a time. "18 years since birth" is a time. "9 months since conception" is a time. Length of pregnancy varies greatly, and if time is what you care about, "birth" creates a double standard--two babies are conceived the same night, one born 10 days before it's due, the other 10 days after. And yet, by your standard, even though they've existed the exact same amount of time, one is a person and the other isn't.
"the idea of publicly acknowledged stages of human development are indeed universal."
I didn't say it wasn't; I said "varying degrees of personhood". A minor has just as much right to live as a legal adult. In that regard, personhood is binary. |
