More Rights for the Unborn?

When I wanted to make jokes around astrology and horoscopes, that's also what I highlighted to anyone highly invested in it: Sun, Moon and planets can surely influence an organism of a few cells significantly more than they can a full sized baby at birth.

I was actually also curious if anyone would notice that this doesn't invalidate any astrology since it only means they missed their mark on causality by roughly 9 months (ofc, there's plenty more evidence to invalidate astrology without that :), but nobody came up with that.

As for full person-entitlements at conception, for anyone who's ever gone through IVF, not all early embryos are "viable": in other words, they wouldn't ever result in an actual human baby developing (I also found this to be a helpful way to look at inseminated eggs to reduce the psychological toll of failed embryo transfers; my wife didn't find anything helpful though, so your mileage may vary). Most of these "die" out (actually, stop their cell division and proper cell differentiation) by 8 weeks, though some only do that later in the cycle.

Anyway, all this to say that it's ridiculous to consider an embryo a person, at least until it's clear it will develop into one (finding a biological age where that happens is hard though, but it's not for a number of weeks). Should people whose embryos die out by that point be taken to court for murder (negligence or intentional): embryos are persons, right?

If you want to go there, I am not sure why stop at embryos, when you could treat all human eggs and sperm the same way: they are on their way to becoming a person, and we need to make sure that all the eggs are inseminated, and all the millions of sperm cells get their job done (otherwise, you are killing those cells by not letting them fulfill their destiny). I hope the absurdity of the stance is clear. So if life exists right after conception, it exists just as well before that as eggs and sperm are living cells.

Finally, a legal matter, especially the one that does not even concern itself with the particular question, does not decide when "life begins". It's decided by people agreeing on scientific conditions of what constitutes a new live being, and in particular, a new human being. Science is objective, but people still need to agree on particular terms.

As far as I understood it, reversing this decision on a federal level will simply put existing anti-abortion laws back into validity in a number of states. They can still change those laws.

The tax benefits would be too easy to cheat, by claiming a person was pregnant while doing taxes, but then miscarried. All of this would create a ton of needless paperwork... the same goes for a SSN if there is a miscarriage... needless paperwork.

The passport wouldn't make sense, because it's not like the child can go off on their own. It would be more needless paperwork to make a padantic point.

Just because RvW has been reversed does not mean life begins at conception. In fact, it is this debate, as to when life begins, that is the real underlying issue that will never have consensus. There will now be 50 different opinions codified into law. This is not a US specific debate or question, it's just been at the forefront of American politics because it was tied to a decision by a court top-down, rather than the people bottom up, republic style. Thus it became a national and political, one-size must fit all solution space, which can now have diversity.

I hope the debate evolves to center around the real questions rather than SCOTUS. What can science tell us (about when a fetus experiences pain or consciousness)? How does this inform our beliefs and the laws?