What particularly amazes me is that many of the same conservatives that "assure" everyone that they only want to allow the states to decide the legality of abortions simultaneously demand that zygotes, embryos, etc. be classified as "persons" under the US Constitution.

These two positions are irreconcilable. If the embryo is a US "person," it has the full complement of rights under the Constitution. Once this legal fact occurs, even attempts at in vitro fertilization become grounds for serial murder, because the process involves the creation of many embryos with the knowledge that most of them will perish in the process.

These embryos must also be counted in the census, because otherwise the states in which they reside will be deprived of adequate proportional representation in the House of Representatives. Because the embryo-persons cannot be destroyed without due process of law (e.g. charging them with a capital crime), the states then have the perverse incentive to create as many as possible in order to receive greater representation and other benefits.

Though nothing could legally prevent people from mass-creating embryos at will, it will necessarily become illegal to keep them frozen for long, because this will be an unreasonable restraint on its liberty interest under the Constitution. Every embryo everywhere, whether in a petre dish or otherwise, must be given every possible opportunity to grow into a baby. In order to prevent mass-death of those embryo-persons without human hosts, women will need to be conscripted, against their will if necessary, to carry them to term. This will be made possible because the full-scale life interest of the embryo-person will legally outweigh the woman's right to be free from pregnancy.

Also, because these embryos are full "persons" under the Constitution, their existence will need to be accounted for in all instances, in order to prevent their accidental or intentional death at the hands of researchers and potential mothers. To protect these persons' vital life interests, women of childbearing age and ability will need to submit to periodic, mandatory pregnancy tests. A woman who even inadvertently causes her embryo to die in her womb could be held criminally liable for murder or manslaughter.

In essence, childbearing and life as we know it would turn upside. If these seem like extreme scenarios, so is the classification of embryos as persons, which makes the scenarios naturally and legally inevitable.

Dangerous doesn't even begin to describe the mindset of people like Santorum.