The recognition in Australia of positive obligations in relation to the right to life - Australian judicial support for using human rights as a guide in the exercise of judicial discretion - abolition of the death penalty as the negative manifestation of the right to life - how enforceable is the right to be free from the death penalty in Australia - positive human rights such as the right to health care - jus cogens in relation to the right to life - enforceability of the right to life as a jus cogens - relevant case law.

In the present study, we set ourselves to analyze a subject, which, due to its importance and extreme complexity, generated many discussions and controversies both at national and international level: the right to life. The great evolution of the contemporary society and the progress registered in various fields brought into the attention of the states, international organizations, specialists in the field and public opinion the pressing problem of interpreting the content and limits of the human fundamental rights and liberties. We set ourselves to analyse the main international instruments regulating the right to life and to identify the situations where determining the content of this fundamental right in necessary. Without the intent of a complete work, we understand, throughout this study, to highline the great importance of the right to life respecting for the entire humanity.

The ongoing criminalisation of abortion is not justified in terms of safety, healthcare, civil liberty or any consistent morality. Restriction of access to abortion is a political issue that only facilitates unjustifiable social control. A prochoice position of a ‘Woman’s Right to Choose’ respects the decision of any individual to decide whether to have an abortion or not and should raise also the political issue of access to services that facilitate either decision. The antichoice position respects neither position and its political advocates in Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael have a track record in opposing health and welfare services that would facilitate either choice. This paper also outlines the failure of arguments around later abortions or selective abortion to undermine the principle of a woman's right to choose.

More than forty years after Roe v. Wade, bills and ballot initiatives that specify conception as the starting point of the human right to life are battlegrounds between pro-life and pro-choice activists. Underlying the controversy is the assumption that if the unborn have a fully human right to life from the moment of conception, then abortion is morally impermissible. Despite the polarized political debate, opinion polls suggest that many Americans are looking for some sort of middle ground on the morality of abortion. What most people lack, however, is a framework for defending a middle position.In this article I seek to provide such a framework by taking a close look at the question of what moral obligations to preserve unborn life actually follow from the assumption that the unborn have a fully human right to life from the outset of pregnancy. Framed in this way, many of the issues presented by abortion are not as unique as is sometimes supposed. Questions about the duty to pres...

This article analyzes the ways in which rights-based arguments are utilized by anti-abortion activists in the UK. Drawing on an ethnographic study featuring 30 abortion clinic sites, anti-abortion marches, and other campaigns, we argue that rights-based claims form an important part of their arguments. In contrast to the way in which human rights law has been interpreted to support abortion provision, anti-abortion activists seek to undermine this connection through a number of mechanisms. First, they align their arguments with scientific discourse and attempt to downplay the religious motivation for their action. While this is an attempt to generate greater credibility for their campaign, ultimately, the coopting of scientific arguments actually becomes embedded in their religious practice, rather than being separate from it. Second, they reconfigure who should be awarded human rights, arguing not only that fetuses should be accorded human rights but also that providing abortion to...

In this article I argue that a positive acknowledgement of the indeterminate character of health should transform, rather than simply hinder, the quality of debate over what is to be understood and expected in connection with a ‘right to health’. I propose that the problem of indeterminacy should not be addressed as a black box producing self-evident consequences. On the contrary, it should be regarded as the specific challenge that the formulation of a right to health in a global perspective must meet. The framing of a right to health in terms of the ‘availability, accessibility, acceptability, and quality’ of public health and health care facilities remains specifically – often urgently – relevant to an absolute majority of human beings, including many in prosperous countries like the United States. It is not in this context that the meaning of ‘health’ appears particularly vague and subjective, however indeterminate it may be in a philosophical sense. It is rather among the privileged minority who can take the availability, accessibility, acceptability and quality of health services more or less for granted (whether through public or private means), that focusing on the indeterminate character of health is of direct practical relevance. The problem of indeterminacy, however, can be regarded as the key towards generating a certain symmetry and complementarity of interest, across the privileged/underprivileged divide, in the task of promoting health as a right.

Commonweal 144, no. 1 (6 January 2017): 11–13