Human and civil models of rights: Healthy and ill disabled and access to health care

The earliest accounts of protections and privileges that are due people as their right sorted humans into different social classes and ranked the groups as to their comparative worth – that is, by comparing the magnitude and fortitude of their entitlements. In contrast, human rights theory holds that all humans are basically the same, at least in the sense that all equally are owed freedom from political or state-facilitated oppression (Hannum 2006). As distinct from rights that entitle only subsets of humans who meet additional eligibility criteria to lay claims, human rights are inclusive of all members of the human species – or at least they are supposed to be.