Davide's Notes

This BBC article tells a sad story about rights to life, professional misconduct and European laws. The full case before the European Court for Human Rights can be found here.

Yes, we know that the right to live as stated in art.2 of the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms is consistently not considered to cover the unborn. And, yes, we know that any jurisdiction to the contrary would oblige the European Union to seriously work on the issue of what rights an unborn baby has, and that this may well contrast with the abortion laws currently in effect in most European countries. And, yes, we know that the applicant could have appealed to seek administrative satisfaction against the wrongdoings of the doctor and/or the hospital, and that in that case she could have probably won the appeal.

So, the verdict of the Court is likely "right".

Still, this story gives me a deep sense of sadness. I still have a hard time making sense of sentences like this one, found on the case judgment, and reflecting the view of a French court (and, it seems, of the law community at large):

‘The embryo is in any event merely the morphological expression of one and the same life that begins with impregnation and continues till death after passing through various stages. It is not yet known with precision when the zygote becomes an embryo and the embryo a foetus, the only indisputable fact being that the life process starts with impregnation’.
It thus appears that there is no legal rule to determine the position of the foetus in law either when it is formed or during its development. In view of this lack of a legal definition it is necessary to return to the known scientific facts. It has been established that a foetus is viable at six months and on no account, on present knowledge, at 20 or 21 weeks.
The court must have regard to that fact (viability at six months) and cannot create law on an issue which the legislators have not yet succeeded in defining.

20 vs 24 weeks... here lies the legal definition of whether something is to be considered on its way to being a person. Oh my.

And, yes, all this has much to do with the BD. Back to the Didache, 2:2:

{Thou shalt do no murder, thou shalt not commit adultery,} thou shalt not corrupt boys, thou shalt not commit fornication, {thou shalt not steal,} thou shalt not deal in magic, thou shalt do no sorcery, thou shalt not murder a child by abortion nor kill them when born, {thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's goods, thou shalt not perjure thyself, thou shalt not bear false witness,} thou shalt not speak evil, thou shalt not cherish a grudge, thou shalt not be double-minded nor double-tongued.

There are times when it's really Two Ways time.