According to the United Nations Declaration on Human Rights, adopted by the General Assembly in 1948, “Everyone has the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law.”
Somebody had better tell the bioethicists, transhumanists, deep ecologists, philosophical materialists—and the others who would base rights on criteria other than being a member of the human species—that the word “everyone” means each and every one of us. In other words, the advocated policies of those who would distinguish between human beings who are “persons” and those who are non persons based on capacities would violate one of history’s most important human rights documents. And no, you animal liberationists, the word “everybody” does not apply to animals. It is an agreement about the rights to which all and only human beings are due—simply and merely because they are human, e.g., human exceptionalism.
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