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"Last year's GOP takeover of the U.S. House and statehouses across the country has dramatically changed the shape of the nation's abortion debate. It has also given a boost to an even more far-reaching effort: the push to legally redefine when life itself begins. The question being raised in legal terms is: When does someone become a person? The answer varies under the law. "The definition of personhood ranges if you're talking about property law, or inheritance, or how the census is taken," says Alexa Kolbi-Molinas, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union's Reproductive Freedom Project. All those differences are exactly what Keith Mason wants to change. He's president of Personhood USA, a group that's trying to rewrite the laws and constitutions of every state - and some countries - to recognize someone as a person "exactly at creation," he says. "It's fertilization; it's when the sperm meets the egg." Mason says the basic problem is that science has advanced faster than policymaking. "We know, without a shadow of a doubt, when human life begins," he says. "But our laws have not caught up to what we know." And according to his organization, those laws should recognize every fertilized egg as an individual and complete human being."

"Sixty years ago, Allied forces brought an end to Adolf Hitler's dream that Germany would rule Europe and dominate the world. The death of Nazi Germany gave birth to a charge that still haunts the scientific community--what might be called "the Nazi analogy." In ethical or policy disputes about science and medicine, no argument can bring debate to a more screeching halt then the invocation of the Nazi comparison. Whether the subject is stem cell research, end-of-life care, the conduct of clinical trials in poor nations, abortion, embryo research, animal experimentation, genetic testing, or human experimentation involving vulnerable populations, references to Nazi policies or practices tumble forth from critics. "If X is done, then we are on the road to Nazi Germany" has become a commonplace claim in contemporary bioethical debates. Sadly, too often those who draw an analogy between current behavior and what the Nazis did do not know what they are talking about. The Nazi analogy is equivalent to dropping a nuclear bomb in ethical battles about science and medicine. Because its misuse diminishes the horror done by Nazi scientists and doctors to their victims, it is ethically incumbent upon those who invoke the Nazi analogy to understand what they are claiming."