(No longer being focused on the embryo, but on the Human that the embryo is destined to become)
Lex Ratio profecta a rerum natura (Law is a prescription of Reason):
It was only a group of cells, and it is still only a group of cells. However, I no longer base my right to dispose of it on what it is. I now base my judgment of my right to dispose of the embryo on the Human it is destined to become tomorrow.
The rule identified in these pages is more than just a rule of law! It is a question of the consideration to be given to someone; such a datum is a rule, a law, which is inscribed first and foremost in the heart of each person. The identified rule is a human rule before being a legal one.
In the following section, it will be possible to digress from strictly formatted legal writing and express more sensitive reactions that reflect the new consideration that must be given to the one who is to come and the new consideration of the embryo because of the one it is destined to be (1/). Today, the first and foremost Right that must be recognised for every individual is the Right to be/to exist, and this Right stands in opposition to the right to terminate the life of an embryo (2/):
"The reason you refuse to kill this girl is the same reason you should refuse to kill this embryo"
# Do not kill because of the Right to exist of the Human who is yet to come.
"Why am I yelling: 'Don't kill this little girl!'?
I'm shouting: 'Don't kill her!' with all my heart because I truly value her presence in the future, because I want her to be here tomorrow. But, who!... Who is the One i want to be here tomorrow? I exclaim: 'Don't kill this little girl!', because I care about the presence tomorrow of... the One she is detined to become!
So, if I genuinely care about the person who hasn't arrived yet, I must also care just as much about this other person who hasn't arrived yet. And just as I shout: 'Don't kill that little girl!', should I not also shout: 'Don't kill that embryo!'?"
- Girl's case:
"Don't kill her because...
...she has to be here tomorrow!"
- Embryo's case:
"Don't kill it because...
...she has to be here tomorrow!"
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# «Would I "only" deprive him of being here tomorrow?»
"My friend, who became pregnant accidentally, didn't want to keep the child. However, she was hesitant. She was afraid of doing something wrong. So, I told her that she could go through with it, that she was killing no one, that she was "only" depriving someone of being there tomorrow.
However, if she had told me not to eliminate this embryo that was growing inside her, but a newborn child, what would I have said to her? Would I have told her that we are "only" depriving someone of being there tomorrow?"
"To kill it or not to kill it? That was the question. And it should be understood that this question is not to be resolved by examining what the embryo is today, but by considering the Human it is destined to become tomorrow.
Indeed, it is because of who he or she is destined to be tomorrow that one refuses to kill the other !"
"This right, which was only a right to destroy an embryo, becomes a right to dispose of a child"
# The right to abortion, a right to dispose of others.
"The Human to come was nothing, unimportant, he becomes everything, a Human to protect like any other Human.
Therefore, as this Human changes in value, so does the act that deprives him/her of being and as the act changes in value, so does the right to commit the act. If the Human in question is nothing, the act does not dispose of anything, and the right to commit the act can then be recognised. On the contrary, if the Human in question becomes everything, the act that did not dispose of anything becomes an act that disposes of someone, and the right to commit the act can then no longer be recognised. Everything is linked : the Human, the act affecting the Human and the right to commit the act affecting the Human ; and, if the foundational element of this dataset—the Human—changes in value, the value of all the other related data will also change.
Reflecting on this topic, the first question that needed to be asked—the fundamental one, the one too often set aside, and the one everyone has always failed to ask—is the following: 'What value should be attributed to the Human who is yet to come?'. And, today, it has finally been understood that this individual must be taken into consideration, that he is the very one we seek to protect when we exclaim: 'Don't kill this person!'."
"How we view this right depends on how we value the Human it deprives of existence"
The right to dispose of a Human can only exist if that Human is deemed to have no value.
The right to dispose of the child yet to come can only exist if that child is considered worthless. Before discussing this right, Before discussing this right, we must consider the child whose existence it denies. The question is: Are we certain this child is valueless?"
"If this Human, presently without any value, is granted absolute value, then this right to self-disposal becomes a right to violate the first Human Right"
Today, there is only an embryo >
My right = a right over an embryo.
The embryo has no Right >My right violates no Right.
Tomorrow, there is a Human >
My right = a right over a Human.
The Human to come has the Right to exist > My right violates his/her Right
The Error leads us believe in the innocence of the act (and consequently in the existence of a right to commit the act).
The Exit from Error reveals the harm done to the Human (and thus the nonexistence of that right to harm the Human).
"The Error only sees the destruction of the embryo; the Exit from Error perceives the violation of the Right"
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# The reality of a law : Absolute power over others.
"Because it is within my power to say: “this one will be and live, this other one will not be and will not live !”, am I not placing my right above his person?"
"The woman who decides to have an abortion does not postpone the arrival of the child she decides not to have. She only postpones having a child to another day. But, this child, she crosses it out. She will never have this child. When she becomes a mother, she will become the mother of another child. The right to abort is thus nothing more than saying: "this child will be here tomorrow and this other child will not be here tomorrow!".
O! This right, formulated in this way, takes on a very particular form. It seems to refer to this Absolute power that some have granted themselves over others and which has been the cause of the worst human dramas in the History of Humanity. With this 'right', have we not once again succumbed to the temptation of seeing ourselves as a deity, a sort of evil demiurge, who sets his condemnations by deciding who will rise tomorrow in the light of day and who will be denied it?
Indeed, what is the difference between this power and the power of those heads of state who, with one stroke of the pen, eliminate all those listed as a threat to the 'welfare' of the state? Doesn't this right also consist of getting rid of whoever is considered a threat to our own 'well-being'?
Existences intersect, intermingle, influence each other and we have always been tempted by this desire to control the existence of others, to keep those who meet the criteria and to eliminate those who pose a problem, those whose existence is an obstacle to our own existence. We have always felt the desire to decide whether or not someone else will be here tomorrow. This is how we reassure ourselves, if we know that we will not find tomorrow, on our path, the one whose existence could disturb the tranquillity of our own existence: the political agitator, the enemy, the rival, the troublemaker, etc. And today, have we not once again succumbed to this temptation by granting ourselves the Power to decide whether or not we will find tomorrow, on our path, the one who could disturb the tranquillity of our existence: ... our own child?
'You, you ll be here tomorrow! But you, you will not!'; these are the words that all those heads of state silently pronounced when studying the reports of their secret police. And aren’t these the same words silently uttered today by all of us when we decide to exercise our 'right' to abortion?
"'I keep this child or I don't keep it!'. If it turns out that the one to whom these words are addressed should be considered, we have given ourselves absolute power over this person!"
I will be reassured. I will be told that this child on whom I exercise this Power, does not exist when I decide to deprive him of being. Except that the simple and cold logic intervenes, catches up with us, and answers: the one we decide whether or not he or she will be there tomorrow is never the one who exists at the moment we make this decision, but always the one who, at that moment, is yet to come!"
"The 'right to self-determination' no longer exists if it is understood that this 'right' corresponds to the right to dispose of others"
The embryo of the present moment corresponds to the existence of a young woman placed on the moment to come.
And we possess the right to make this young woman vanish. Tomorrow, upon reaching the end of this pier, we will find no one.
The power that this right grants us over this person is absolute. This is how this case is resolved : if this person is deemed worthless, this right is innocent (100 x 0 = 0). On the contrary, if this person is to be valued, then we have claimed absolute power over someone. We have placed in our hands the most terrible of powers (100 x 1 = 100).
Depending on the consideration given to this Human, the innocent act becomes the worst human drama. That is why we must be certain to answer the first question correctly—the one posed by this site: Is the one to come truly worthless?
The law has placed in my hands the power to decide on his existence.
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# A legitimate right, an illegitimate right.
"I have an abortion because I don't want this child to be here tomorrow; but the first wish that I express for others is that they are here tomorrow! Does this make sense?"
There are these two rights, the currently recognised and the newly identified, both of which concern the Human to come, except that they do not have the same provisions for him. The first of these two rights reduces this Human to being merely an object of law, whereas the other right makes him a subject of law. There is a conflict between two rights which reflects a conflict between two distinct and opposing considerations of this Human. The question then is whi
"There is the right to abort, a right that grants women the power to deprive the coming child of being, and there is the newly identified right, the Right recognised to the coming child to be. These two rights concern the one who is to come and the fact of his being, but they express opposite dispositions towards him: one grants the power to decide over his presence tomorrow, while the other imposes the duty to respect this presence tomorrow. These two rights are the negation of each other and the question is then which one is the legitimate Right and which one is the illegitimate one? Which one is the one to be recognised and which one is the one that cannot be recognised?
These two rights stem from two contradictory wills expressed toward the Human to come. Two wills, and therefore two different considerations of this Human. In order to determine which of these two rights is the correct one, it is then necessary to establish which of these two considerations is the right one: "should this Human be considered or not?".
"These two rights, which are expressed in the same terms, are opposed to each other! Question: which is the right one?"
We had never before thought to question ourselves about this Human, since he was not real, how could he be considered? But, today we are asked: "Who are you thinking of when you say you want this girl to be here in 20 years?". We are thinking of a young woman who is entirely fictional, someone we have never seen, someone who exists only in our minds, but this young woman corresponds to the girl standing before us at this present moment, and even though she is just a representation, an image in our minds, we say that this young woman must be real tomorrow, that this imagined person corresponds to a reality that must exist, that has the Right to exist. The question—and the answer we give to it—forces us to consider differently the person who is destined to exist in the future. This person, whom we picture as a vague dream in our mind, ceases to have the same value as a vague dream that can be swept away with a mere wave of the hand. On the contrary, we realise that we consider this person as a reality that must be. We discover that the person whom we can only conceive of through our imagination should be concerned by the Law.
We realise that the reality we seek to protect—affirming that we must preserve the little girl standing before us—is also the young woman we imagine dancing in a bar. However, not far from this young woman, we can also imagine another young woman dancing in this bar. Our hand, always so ready to touch everything around her, suddenly holds back. We tell ourselves that even if we can only imagine this young woman, we cannot however extinguish her presence tomorrow. We tell ourselves that we do not have that right. We tell ourselves that this imagined young woman also has the right to become a reality tomorrow, dancing and having fun in this bar—and that this right contradicts, cancels, and invalidates the right we always believed we had over her.
There are these two rights, the currently recognised and the newly identified, both of which concern the Human to come, except that they do not have the same provisions for him. The first of these two rights reduces this Human to being merely an object of law, whereas the other right makes him a subject of law. There is a conflict between two rights which reflects a conflict between two distinct and opposing considerations of this Human. The question then is which of these two Rights is right and which is wrong? In other words, which of these two considerations of this Human is the good one and which is the bad one: the one giving him no value or the one giving him absolute value? And today, we realise that we have always been wrong in attributing no consideration to this Human. We realise today that we have always been wrong in acting as this Human had no Rights.
"We realise that the reality we consider in every Human is also this reality that this Human is in the future."
We had never realised that in the expression of the Will for someone to be here tomorrow lies a complete contestation, a denial of another will: the expressed intention to terminate a pregnancy, the expressed intention to prevent the future child from being! The woman (or rather the man behind her) seeks to terminate a pregnancy because she or he does not want the coming child to be here tomorrow! However, the act of terminating a pregnancy is voluntary precisely because we have not fully comprehended who is the true subject of our Will when we express the wish for another person to exist tomorrow! The 'right' to voluntarily terminate a pregnancy exists only because we have failed to understand that the one whom this right deprives of being deserves to be considered."
"There is a conflict between two Wills concerning the same subject! Which Will is the valid one? Which Will must write the law?"
"Why do I reach out my hand to the one you will be tomorrow (in the case of the girl), but not to the one it will be tomorrow (in the case of the embryo)?"
"Abortion laws enshrine an illegitimate will!"
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# The Right i recognise in her invalidates the right that the law recognises in me.
"Until today, we have always been in a position to tell any pregnant woman who wished to have an abortion that she could do so. This was because no other right had been identified to oppose the right to abortion. However, that is no longer the case.
Today, a new Right emerges—one that compels us to reconsider the exercise of our right to terminate a pregnancy. This Right does not come from written law, but from the depths of our being. It is inscribed in each of us. It is our sensitivity to others that dictates it to us. It is our sensitivity to others that reveals to us the existence of this unwritten right, challenging the validity of the right inscribed in the body of established rules.
The mere existence of a right does not automatically legitimise its exercise. If a deeper, more just law resides within us, then this inner law prevails over the written one. The Right inscribed within each of us has ascendancy over the rights penned on paper.
In ancient Rome, the organisation of games in which the death of others was made a spectacle was legally recognised. The lives of some people were played with and it was a recognised right. A number of human tragedies were written into the law; it is even because they were enshrined in the law that these tragedies could have been committed. A number of inhumane acts have been considered "rights" that we could claim as "ours." But does the fact that they were "our rights" give us the right to exercise them?
Because we had the right to participate in these games, did we have to go to these games? Was there not a law buried within us, which commanded us to do nothing with this right? This law was this voice full of humanity which, shouting from the depths of our being, was opposed to someone going to his death for the entertainment of the multitude.
"Is there not a law buried within us that commands us to do nothing with this right?"
The true parliament is within us, and its law is above human laws, above all human laws. No matter what the written law says, it is the law that arises from the will inscribed within us to respect others—the innocent other—that prevails. Even though I have the right to erase this child whose arrival would change my life, I know which law I must obey!
Today, the only Right that has authority over me is the Right that I recognise for my child to be here tomorrow and to play in this park, to run in this meadow, to walk along this path that is the path of his life"
"The Right I recognise for this child is superior to the right that the law recognises for me"
"By expressing the desire for others to be here tomorrow, I reject my right to deprive my child of being here tomorrow!"
"My Will = Her Right!
Her right opposes my right;
my Will opposes my right!"
"The 'right to control my body' is a false right, the result of an error, of a Lie, seeking to enter within me to dispose of my child; and I say 'no' to that right because I say 'yes' to my child!"
In our democratic system, human will and law are not intended to be in contradiction. The law is supposed to reflect the expression of the popular will. And today, since each of us wants the presence of others tomorrow, each of us can only support any law that protects this presence—that is, any law preserving the embryo. Today, laws prohibiting abortion are no longer a matter of religious conviction expressed by some and imposed on others; rather, they become—as they ought to be—the expression of the popular will, laws that are desired and respected by each of us.
"Since everyone desires the presence of others tomorrow, everyone should be willing to endorse and uphold any law that safeguards this presence"
"The Parliament must rule:
This Human is to be protected >
Duty to preserve it (the embryo)!"
"My freedom ends where the Right of the one yet to come begins!"
There is a fundamental principle of Law, which is the legal transposition of the principle of equality among humans: the right of each person ends where the right of others begins (Freedom consists in being able to do anything that does not harm others — French Declaration of Human Rights, August 26, 1789, Article 4).
The presented thought reveals a Right whose existence had never been supposed before. This new Right, like any Right recognised for others, obligates us, meaning that it restricts our scope of action, limits our power of intervention, constrains our... freedom. The following passage presents some reactions to this curtailment of freedom resulting from the emergence of this new Right. This restriction of freedom is not something we endure; on the contrary, it is a restriction that we welcome, because deep down in each of us, we can only wish to respect the foremost Human Right.
"Would this choice that is mine not have touched anyone knowing that he would not be here today?"
"Offer me this "freedom to choose", and I reply that my choice is made, I choose the Human !"
On this page, an act is mentioned before it is committed. It would also be possible to discuss this act after it has been committed. The Human who—at the time of the act—was yet to come is the one who—after the act—is not here today.
The following page is about the victim of the violation of the Right to be, and to designate him, a term is created: "the Absent".
"When I kiss you, I am not only embracing the person you are today. I am embracing, more broadly, my hope for you: that you may live your life, that you may be here tomorrow. I am embracing your existence tomorrow; I am embracing the person you are destined to become.
And therefore, as I embrace your presence tomorrow, should I not also embrace the presence of your sister tomorrow? And as a testament to this desire, should I not also embrace the embryo she is today, growing within me?"
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"You are here today because yesterday I had accepted you. And even if the embryo developing inside me today doesn't seem to be someone, I am already proud to say tomorrow to your little sister or brother : 'Yesterday, when you were nothing more than a few cells, I had already accepted you!'"
In the background stands the Tree of Knowledge, while in the foreground are four people, one of whom holds the forbidden fruit. This one refers to the parliamentarian, the one who initiated the law, the one who stated that it was permissible to do it, that there was nothing wrong with doing it. The law seemed good to him, so he took it, he bit into it. However, by legalising the destruction of the embryo, he legitimised, gave authority, to the act of depriving the child to come of being. He has validated and implanted in everyone's mind the idea that this practice is innocent! Emerging from the Cave and entering the garden of the Just Right, he discovers today that he has been deceived, he realises that the Error has misled him, he discovers that he has participated in the Lie by making Humanity believe that it could dispose of the one it had to consider above all others : our own children. He thought he was not committing anything reprehensible, he only saw the pile of cells. He realised - too late, always too late like Epimetheus opening the box - that he had brought into the world under the soft mask of the recognised right - because to enter, you must be masked - the violation of the first of Human Rights.
