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Does the Unborn Child Have a Right to Life? The Insufficient Answer of the European Court of Human Rights in the Judgment Vo v. France

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 March 2019

Jakob Pichon

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In the July 8, 2004 case of Vo v. France, the European Court of Human Rights (“ECtHR”) dealt with the question of whether the embryo/fetus (“the fetus”) enjoys the protection of the right to life provided by Article 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights (“the Convention”). Below, a pregnant woman lost her fetus due to an error made by the attending doctor, and the Cour de Cassation, the French court of last instance, acquitted the doctor of involuntary homicide on the grounds that a fetus is not a person within the meaning of the French Criminal Code. Claiming a violation of her child's right to life within the meaning of the Convention, the woman appealed to the ECtHR. The ECtHR left open the question whether or not a fetus falls within the scope of Article 2; declaring that, even assuming Article 2 was applicable to a fetus, there had been no failure by France to comply with its obligations under Article 2, because the ECtHR deemed the institution of criminal proceedings unnecessary. Rather, it considered the possibility for the applicant to bring an action for damages as sufficient and therefore found that there had been no violation of the fetus's right to life.

Type
Developments
Information
German Law Journal , Volume 7 , Issue 4 , 01 April 2006 , pp. 433 - 444
Copyright
Copyright © 2006 by German Law Journal GbR 

References

1 Eur. Court. H.R., Vo v France, Judgment of 8 July 2004, no. 53924/00, not yet published, available at: http://hudoc.echr.coe.int [hereinafter Vo].Google Scholar

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