Sensible article notes that people wish to be given their dignity

When we want to do that, we recognize that people are made in the image and likeness of God and treat them accordingly. When we don’t want to do that, we come up with excuses for aborting and torturing them, such as “What about abortion?” when we want to commit torture and “What about torture?” when we want to commit abortion. Both lies are ways of avoiding the fact that the person we are abusing has dignity that inheres in the fact of what they are as creatures in the image of God, and not in what they do in offending our ideas of liberty (as a single mom) or in what they might do (if it turns out, after we have tortured them, that they might know something we suspect they might possibly know).

When you reduce a person to a thing (which is what you always do when you make them a means to an end), you inherently attack their dignity.