The really right question to ask is: who really has rights?

One thing that intrigues me is the name of the 1789 Declaration of Rights issued by the French at the beginning of their 10-year-long Great Revolution: The Rights of Man and of the Citizen.

Already in the 1790s, French women realised that ‘rights’ were probably literally meant for men and not for all humans, irrespective of sex. Their pleas to be included in the polity were largely ignored, as women’s place was at home raising the children, the enfants de la patrie.

Since then, thanks to the efforts of many (women and men), women have become full members of the polity, equal to men. In other words, no longer confined to the private sphere of the private family but welcomed into the greater family, or brotherhood, of the nation and, therefore, its political manifestation, the State.

Ideologically speaking, women had always been human but they became equal to men only after a relentless struggle. They finally became ... citizens. In politics, ideology is always more important than biology.

I have italicised ‘citizen’ because of its implications in this context. I am not referring to ‘passive’ citizenship, but to ‘active’ citizenship – being an active member of the polity.

Children, for instance, are ‘passive’ citizens, as they can exercise no political right even though they enjoy some protection at law.

Indeed, the idea of citizen and citizenship is problematic, because of the discord between ideology and biology. It would seem that not all biologically human beings are human on the ideological level.

Again, consider children. They start their biological existence as small foetuses, growing into infants, children and finally adolescents, before achieving full citizenship. With each phase, the law grants them more protection and more active participation in the polity. What changes is not the biological existence of the individual (whose form ‘evolves’ over time), but the status given to the individual in accordance with a political construct.

The debate on whether to give 16-year-olds the vote, for instance, fits into this view. The debate will weigh biological considerations (psychological maturation, say) against political exigencies. At the end of the day, however, politics will no doubt have the upper hand.

In other words, it is politics (or political ideology) that decides when the biological human being becomes a political human being, and therefore a human being endowed with the right to exercise and enjoy rights. In the past, not all human beings were members of the polity: consider slaves, who were treated like incomplete humans by one ideology and then emancipated by another ideology. Let us not forget, however, that when the black slaves of Haiti revolted and demanded emancipation in the 1790s, France agreed on condition that the Haitians pay it 90 million francs as compensation for loss of property (slaves) and income. The sum, settled only in 1947, was equivalent to more or less US$21 billion.

Political ideology may decide one day that androids have rights and can exercise them – a theme explored even in movies, such as Bicentennial Man starring Robin Williams. Indeed, last October, Saudi Arabia granted citizenship to robot Sophia – the absolute victory of politics over biology. A machine has been adopted into the human race and given one of humanity’s most precious gifts: state citizenship. A few weeks later, The New York Post reported that Sophia, the machine produced by Hanson Robotics and granted Saudi Arabian citizenship, now wanted a baby.

One victim of the politics victory over biology is the unborn human being. Denied citizenship, the unborn human being is also denied full political and legal protection in the present dominant ideology. Biology has nothing to do with this ideological position. All talk about “bunch of cells”, “undifferentiated tissue”, etc., is simply nonsense and inconsequential.

Just like with teenagers being given the right to vote, the legal situation of the unborn depends solely on politics: the same politics that, at different historical moments, decided that slaves were full citizens, later that women were full citizens and now, just a couple of months ago, granted Saudi Arabian citizenship to a (female?) robot manufactured in Hong Kong.

 

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Some comments on the obscenities of the past few days:

1. The Crane Currency comedy is obscene. Only an idiot will not understand what went on behind the scenes. However, the people have the right to know how and why public subsidies can be transformed into lucrative private deals.

2. The Vitals deal is equally obscene. And, again, only an idiot will not put two and two together. Still, our right to know the details is sacrosanct and the State has a duty to respect it.

3. The sham American University of Malta is one big bogus project: obscene, like many others under the Best Government in the Universe. Again: do we really need to ask what happened behind the scenes?

4. Appointing an etiquette expert on the Bioethics Committee is obscene. It seems that we need to spell out that there is indeed an important difference between etikett and etika. The former is not the diminutive of the latter.

5. The government attack on Charles Caruana Carabez is also obscene and cannot be tolerated in a democracy. What has Malta become, a liberal but totalitarian state? Where have the waving of the liberal flag, the anti-censorship ranting, the quotations from Voltaire all gone? Is poking fun a thought crime now?

As citizens of a state bound by human rights we have the right not only to freedom of expression but also to express ideas that “offend, shock or disturb”. That said, Mr Caruana Carabez is guilty only of friendly banter. If Charlie Hebdo could offend the Prophet Mohammed, Jesus Christ, etc., why can’t Mr Caruana Carabez poke fun at women? What kind of liberalism is this?

Anyway, Je suis Charlie Carabez.

6. Lastly, there’s no two ways about it: Jonathan Ferris deserves full solidarity. A man has the right to live, no matter what.