Fetuses never qualified for human rights to begin with

 I am sure many of us on this sub have encountered the silly concept that "a fetus is not a human." At first, I thought it was just some silly, outdated concept being used by people not well versed in the debate, something to just look past. Now I realize that it is, indeed, an outdated concept, but not one we should just look past. That phrase tells us a lot about our history on the discussion of, not just humans, but human rights.

The idea of "human rights" came about during times when the idea that the unborn were not human was still widely held. (This is where that outdated argument came from.) The concept of human rights never included fetuses.

The concept of human rights came about during these times, when fetuses were not included in the concept of "human."

And this is further supported by the fact that abortion was not seen as a similar crime or sin to that of murder throughout history.

There has always been a marked difference between that of born humans and that of developing fetuses. This concept didn't change just because scientific definitions updated and altered. In fact, much of society has not been unaware of what occurs in the womb. People have seen slaughtered pregnant animals, miscarriages of both humans and animals alike, as well as had preterm labor. The inception of human rights did not occur without knowledge of what occurred in the womb. Which tells us that human rights were meant for something beyond merely being of human origin. Which later progressed into the biological/genealogical concept of human.

Language has changed over time. We now understand that fetuses are human in a genealogical nature (which is why many of us raise an eyebrow seeing the argument of "a fetus isn't human.")

This has made us have need to differentiate between the idea of what we were meaning before science was a thing, and that of science's definition of human. So the philosophical vs the biological/genealogical ideas.

Prolifers seemed to have concluded that "human rights" should naturally extend to fetuses now that we know more.

But to do so would be to ignore why they were not extended to fetuses to begin with. (And I would argue still isn't present just because of advances in embryology.)

From what we know of human rights, they apply to born, sentient individuals and apply in such a way that they could not conflict with another person's human rights. Fetuses do not fit in with either of those ideas.

Pregnant people have the right to their life, to their body, and to be sound in their person. They have the right to not have the will of others inflicted upon their body and bodily integrity.

If we were to extend human rights to fetuses, they would be directly alienating the rights that already belong to that of the pregnant person. This inadvertently either implies that pregnant people are not human or that human rights only apply in specific situations, in which case casts human rights as trivial and meaningless, as well as not universally applicable, which goes against the reason for their inception to begin with. It further contradicts itself as we cannot apply human rights at conception, to only later be taken from them upon pregnancy.

We also know that human rights are a philosophical and social concept, not a biological one. It was meant to be in line with the philosophical concept of human, the one in the outdated sentiment of "fetuses are not human." If it was meant to be applied solely based off dna, human rights would then also extend to parts of humans, such as organs or gametes. (Which they do not.)

The fact that human rights has consistently gone on to include the language of being born and that of having access to abortion, shows that human rights was always predicated on a philosophical concept of which fetuses did not fall into and not just based off their dna.