Personhood 101

I definitely would not be qualified to teach a course on personhood. But if such a course were offered to me, I'd sign up in a heartbeat!

What got me aboard this train of thought was a recent article about the Supreme Court of Alabama, which recently decreed that human embryos are children:

https://www.cnn.com/2024/02/20/us/alabama-embryo-law-ruling-supreme-court/index.html

"Preposterous!" was my immediate reaction. And I remain firmly pro-choice on the abortion question. But what exactly characterizes a child? Or an adult? Or a person?

Most Canadian adults are probably aware that Canadian women were not legally considered persons until 1929. Even then, we had to appeal to our colonial masters to earn that status, as the Supreme Court of Canada was not yet the highest court of the land.

Humans and prospective humans aside, there are other entities out there that have been granted the rights of personhood. Rivers, for instance:

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jul/25/rivers-around-the-world-rivers-are-gaining-the-same-legal-rights-as-people

Or parks:

https://commons.allard.ubc.ca/fac_pubs/715/

I'll mention here that I see many advantages to prioritizing natural features like rivers, forests and wetlands over... I don't know, other things that seem less natural and desirable. But to deem them persons? That feels like a bit of a stretch. Do we need a category other than personhood like, for example, spirithood? But how would we ever come to some sort of consensus in defining a concept that nebulous?

I think we need to work on our terminology here. I'm just not quite sure how to go about it.