One side warned of a world filled with hybrid, half-human creatures. The other described an upside-down legal system where fertilized human eggs could sue their mothers for smoking.

These two nightmares bookended the myriad of possibilities raised by supporters and opponents of a constitutional amendment to define a fetus as a person.

The discussion took place Monday at a four-hour Georgia House subcommittee hearing on House Resolution 536, the "Human Life Amendment."

The proposed amendment to the Georgia Constitution states that "the word 'person' applies to all human beings, irrespective of age, race, sex, health, function or condition of dependency, including unborn children at every state of their biological development, including fertilization."

The hearing brought in a bevy of activists on both sides and at least a half dozen lawyers to argue for and against the proposal. Among them four constitutional law professors who ridiculed the proposal. Among the supporters was David Gibbs, the lawyer who represented the parents of Terri Schiavo, the Florida woman at the center of a long court battle over whether her husband could remove her feeding tube.

Schiavo, who was on life support for 15 years, died in March 2005.

Gibbs insisted the amendment could be "done correctly in a way that could be legal."

Nearly 20 people testified before the committee. Among them was Brandi Steedley of Waycross, who was advised by her doctors to end her pregnancy because of her cancer diagnosis. She didn't and both she and her now 7-year-old daughter survived. She supports the measure.

Holly Comer, executive director of the YWCA of Northwest Georgia, told the panel she is pro-life but worries the legislation could make abortion illegal in cases of rape and incest.

"Are we willing to say that a 12-year-old child raped by a stranger or who is a victim of incest can't take emergency contraception and must be forced to go through the pregnancy?" she asked.

Gibbs acknowledged that the proposed amendment would not allow those exemptions.

The law professors testified that the potential impact of the legislation goes far beyond abortion. Because of its wording, they said the measure could outlaw some forms of contraception, bar family members from discontinuing feeding and treatment for terminally ill relatives and make capital punishment illegal. It also could give death row inmates more legal recourse to reopen their cases.

Gibbs told the subcommittee that the law professors were wrong and that Georgia could pass the amendment without fear of constitutional transgressions.

Supporters of the legislation argued that without some clear definition of "personhood," the door could be opened for a "transhumanist" creation of hybrid human creatures and harvesting of cloned embryos to make body parts.

"Life begins at fertilization, and we believe it is time to put that in the Georgia Constitution," said state Rep. Martin Scott (R-Rossville). "Now is the time. Georgia is the place. Let us vote and let them live."

It would take a two-thirds vote by both chambers of the General Assembly and a majority vote in a statewide referendum in favor of the amendment to add this language to Georgia law.

Georgia Right to Life is promoting the resolution, but the proposal is not universally endorsed by anti-abortion groups. The proposal is not endorsed by National Right to Life, and the Catholic Archdiocese of Atlanta opposes it.