To veer off on another bit of a tangent, the 1886 Supreme Court ruling that established the precedent that a corporation is a person with all the 14th Amendment privileges of personhood opened Pandora's Box to what we see today.
I am afraid that nothing short of a constitutional amendment defining personhood is going to solve any of these problems, if even that would be sufficient at this late date.
This is, obviously, a minefield, since we all intuitively understand that real human society would best be served by the narrowest possible definition of personhood, yet forces from all sides are pulling mightily to change the age-old and universal understanding that a "person" is a natural-born member of the homo sapiens species who has not yet (permanently) died.
Personally (no pun intended), I am currently far more worried about non-meat entities being persons than I am about which sub-set of homo sapiens ectoplasm falls into the definition de jour (but, obviously, I am 100% pro-choice and pro-hemlock). However, rapid advances in laboratory technique makes meat intelligence a looming threat of monumental proportions, as well.
Within my children's lifetimes, if not in mine, these issues will become monstrous, and we would be well served to start addressing them now, as a national or planetary society.
