The right to life

The right to life

We have mentioned the right to life in our previous articles, but it is very important to go in-depth on this subject. For life itself is nothing more than the essence we think it to be. Some people end their lives without hardly having time to see life for what it is. Others spend their entire lives in shameful waste, waiting for the day when they take their final breath. Still, the right to life is among the most important parts of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights from 1948, just after World War II. Humans finally understood that life is priceless, and that every human being has the right to live out his or her years on this planet. Without their life being taken away.

This has, of course, come in direct conflict with the unwillingness of some countries to let go of the death penalty. Debates have rumbled on for decades without a solution. Hundreds of people are being put to death in the USA alone, and they are supposed to be the faces of our Western culture. China is killing thousands every year, but they have been under immense pressure to stop the death penalty. Saudi Araboa regularly decapitates people with swords as part of their capital punishment system. So why the silence towards the US? By the way, the last public execution in Western Europe was in France, and it was not longer than forty years ago. This was an execution by guillotine in 1977.

What is life?

There are several dilemmas when it comes to the right of life, even though most of the main points were clearly stated in the Declaration from 1948. For example, when it comes to abortion – how could you mix the right to life with the right to control your own body, by killing a living thing you yourself have grown?

The debate centres on where exactly life – and therefore, the right to it – begins. Those who are pro-life argue that life begins at conception and therefore, abortion equals the violation of the right to life of the foetus. Those who are pro-choice, on the other hand, also consider the conflict of this “right to life” with the mother’s right to health and her right to life. If the mother risks dying from a pregnancy, whose right to life is worth more? The debate goes on, both in academic circles and among the public.