2024-03-20
Whether human embryos are human beings is a question resolved by human embryology and developrnental biology.
Among the constants in human history is this: When people want to justify killing, enslaving, or otherwise abusing a class of their fellow human beings, they first dehumanize them. I suspect that the dehumanization of the victims is typically meant not only to persuade others to go along or look the other way; it is also to convince the dehumanizers themselves.
As a matter of scientifically demonstrable fact, human embryos, no less than human fetuses, infants, toddlers, children, adolescents, and adults, are human beings - living members of the species Homo sapiens. Those words - "embryo," "infant," "adolescent," and so forth - do not name different kinds of entities. They name the same kind of entity (a living member of the human species, a human being, like you or me) at different stages of development.
But some today, for various reasons, want to justify the deliberate killing of human beings at early stages of their development - the embryonic, fetal, even infant stages. And some want to justify the deliberate killing of people in certain conditions - those suffering, for example, from cognitive disabilities or severe dementias. So, as usual, they are at pains to deny that the victims are human. They insist that those of whom they want to license the killing are "nonhuman" or "subhuman," or "prehuman," or "not fully human," or whatever.