ABSTRACT
Impairment and disability can have profound effects on individuals and their families; many of them positive. However, modern capacities to make predictive decisions about the health status of embryos and potential children, advances in prenatal screening and controversial choices about treatment provision in the period following birth, can lead to decisions being taken which are essentially about who should live. The right to life is one of the most significant rights we can claim, and how that right is interpreted – as well as who or what is entitled to its protection – is clearly vital to our ability to experience the entire range of other human rights, like those guaranteed by the European Convention on Human Rights, whose terms were incorporated into UK law by the terms of the Human Rights Act 1998. It is also vital for the application of our foundational principle of respect for persons that who is a ‘person’ is identified.
