Right to Live

What is the right to life?

This is the right which is defined differently according to the time and the place. Historically it is defined as right not to be killed. This right is in the beginning of a simple reprobation and denunciation of the homicide. The legal definition of right to life is called to protect citizens against what is considered as “a legal murder”: the capital punishment.
All these definitions indicate not only about the right of person not to be killed, but also about the right to be born. Therefore, that doesn’t coincide with the rights of women concerning freedom of choice about abortion, because the right to be born directly binds with it.
Some think that before speaking about any rights which touch the aspect of right to life, we must firstly have the right to be born. Is the abortion kind of prevention of life or is it a right of woman to make choices about motherhood? Some believe that the abortion is a crime and it costs human lives, but how about the reasons of the abortion? Taking into consideration the decisions of European Court of Human Rights, which stipulate that the fetus is not protected under Article 2 of European Convention on Human Rights, we can conclude that the right to life of fetus is limited with the right to life of mother. 

And on the other hand, how seriously are we able to combat about right to life while the capital punishment still exists? So is abortion the only aspect that must be discussed in the concept?

Author Hripsime Asatryan