ABSTRACT
In recent years there has been a significant growth of interest in the question of rights relating specifically to children: international Conventions concerning the rights of the child have been agreed, and the intensification of support for a Bill of Rights for the UK, which would seek to entrench some children’s rights now taken for granted, has led to renewed jurisprudential speculation (see, eg, the writings of Bainham, Dewar and Eekelaar) on the basis of these rights and the desirability of their extension as a matter of policy. An upsurge of feeling in the UK and the US in relation to the vexed questions of the right to abortion and the rights urged concerning euthanasia have resulted in jurisprudential argument (see, eg, the writings of Dworkin) intended, in some cases, to change the shape of debate on these topics so that the ‘pro-life’ and the ‘pro-choice’ lobbies might consider their shared concern for life’s sanctity and might examine whether that concern can burgeon into some kind of unity.
