I am only quibbleing with you BT , but why doesn't science say that a person is a person for the whole of its lifespan?
What the law says it says without reason?
An important step has been skipped or gotten wrong , same thing as with the Dread Scott decision.
It was clear that reguarding Black people as persons under the law would be ruinous to the economy , unfair to their owners and entitle them to obvioulsly rediculous rights like gun ownership, so lets not reguard them as persons because this solves so many problems.
If there is not a real reason to reguard a baby as a person at a particular age and not another I have yet to see a convinceing case based on religion, or science.
Baseing the decision of whether to protect a persons rights on the economic impact of the decision just isn't seeking the truth, nor is considering the impact on any other person of the decision.
Either we respect human life , or we have qualified respect for human life as we find it convienent.