Stupid things religious people say

[TheWhiteMarten]

Well, that's the $64,000 question, if you include things that aren't fully human in the usual sense the word is used, do they still possess that right?

You only get to that position, usually, by ignoring actual differences that exist in a pretense that a zygote is no different from a 36 year old person.

Yes; "human rights" should belong to all who fall under the category of "human" - by any scientific metric a fetus would fall under that category.

In that regard there is no meaningful difference between a zygote and a 36 year old individual; their rights are not dependent on their physical traits or accomplishments but rather the innate act of being human.

Again, it would be asking me what the difference is between an Ethiopian and a German in the attempt to explain why the Ethiopian deserves less rights; I don't care about the physical difference but their innate humanity.

As a starter, note that we do not object to killing animals that have more in common with the 36 year old than does the zygote. Why is that moral if some characteristic or set of characteristics is the bar for acquiring the right you want to liberally apply?

We absolutely object to animal abuse, with all states in America and - to the best of my knowledge - all our allied nations having fairly strong animal abuse legislation.

That said - animals are not humans, therefor they don't have an inherent right to human rights. It seems logical to limit the rights to human rights to those who meet the characteristics of being a human.