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7 Med. & L. 475 (1988-1989)
The Right to Be Born

handle is hein.journals/mlv7 and id is 481 raw text is: Medicine Med Law (1989) 7:475-482 and Law P SpdogeVedag 19W The Right to Be Born D. A. Davey Medical School, University of Cape Town, Cape Town 8000, Republic of South Africa Abstract. The right to be born embodies several different rights: the right to be conceived, the right to be implanted in the uterus, and the right to live (or not be aborted). The right to be conceived, or the right of parents to reproduce, may depend upon circumstances. Do couples have the right to have children to whom they cannot offer an adequate upbringing? Do couples have the right to have as many children as they wish if in this way they will reduce the amount of food available to other families? Is the right to have children coupled with a responsibil- ity not to have more children than a community, a country or the world can support? Fertilisation occurs in the fallopian tube, but only about 30% of fertilised ova normally become successfully implanted in the uterus. Fertilisation can also be achieved in a test tube and the resultant embryo then implanted in the mother's uterus to grow into a test tube baby. Is it ethical to allow the use of donor sperm or ova, a surrogate mother, experimentation on embryos, and what should be done with spare embryos? The British Unborn Child (Protection) Bill 1986 prohibits anyone from possessing a fertilised embryo unless it is for the purpose of enabling a specific women to have a child. The right to live and not be aborted may involve a conflict of interests between a mother and her unborn child. A mother may claim absolute rights over her own body, including the right to have an abortion if she desires. The embryo or foetus may have an entitlement to a continued existence in the same way as any other human being or potential human being. Most societies recognise the necessity of abortion when continuation of a pregnancy proposes a serious threat to the life or health of the mother, when the foetus is abnormal or when the pregnancy is the consequence of rape or incest. The Abortion and Steril- isation Act of 1975 codifies what is legally permissible under South African law. The right to life may be related to the degree of protection to be afforded to the foetus according to its stage of development. The ethic of reverence for life may provide a guideline to make sure that abortion is never performed unthinkingly. The right to be born must be coupled with the question of the sort of world a child would be coming into and involves our children, our grandchildren, and genera- tions to come. To cause the existence of another human being and to ensure that human being has at least an ordinary chance of a desirable existence is one of the

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