The expression “right to life” is best understood in the negative. It is the right of a living human being not to have his life discontinued by being killed. It does not mean the right to continue one’s life indefinitely. Death comes to all of us. The right to life, therefore, is not absolute. The arrival of death does not cancel the right to life. That right is the right not to be killed, not the right to go on living continuously.
The right to life applies very clearly to the abortion issue. An unborn child, because of its nature as a human being, has the right not to be killed prematurely. This is a basic right that is grounded in the reality of the unborn child. It takes precedence over the alleged right to control one’s body that advocates of abortion invoke. The so-called right to control one’s body is an invented right. The right of the unborn not to be aborted is a natural right.
Despite the fact that pro-abortion advocates oppose the right to life as championed by pro-life advocates, the expression “right to life” retains a certain appeal for them. Section 7 of the Canadian Charter of rights protected three basic human rights: the rights to “life, liberty, and security of the person”. However, on February 6, 2015, the Supreme Court of Canada, by a 9-0 ruling, argued that not allowing people suffering from severe, incurable illness, disease or disability to die through medically assisted suicide breached these rights.
The logical question that arises is this: how can being put to death (through assisted suicide) be at odds with the right to life as enshrined in Canada’s Criminal Code? It would seem that the right to life would safeguard a person from being put to death in this way. In order to make sense of this conundrum we need to understand how the term “life” has undergone a shift in meaning so that the right to life and the right to death become compatible with each other.
New meanings of the term “life” have been developing over these past several decades. In vitro fertilization and other reproductive technologies created the impression that life was no longer a gift, but a possession. Childless couples argued that they had a “right” to life. This view contradicted the long held and time-honored belief that no person has a right to another person. Laws against slavery needed to be modified so that people could legally regard a new child as an object of another’s rights. Ironically, a couple’s right to have a child came to have greater legal status than the unborn child’s own right to life.
Concurrent with rationalizations to justify children conceived through various technologies, was the notion that human beings have “autonomy” and that their lives should not be controlled by external forces, moral or political, that impinge upon this autonomy. Research on embryos presupposed a right on the part of scientists to the life of their subjects as well as the termination of those lives. The right to autonomy was eclipsing the more basic and realistic right to life in the traditional sense.
The recent ruling of the Canadian Supreme Court looked upon the “right to life” in a slightly different way. It was no longer the right not to be killed. Nor was it the right to use living human subjects. Rather, it regarded the right to life as “the power over life”. Prepositions are very important. Being “for” me is radically different than being “against” me, as freedom “from” something is essentially different that freedom “for” something. The right to have control “over” one’s life is quite different than the right to be safeguarded against being killed. The right to have control “over” life includes the right to death (through medically assisted suicide in this case). We have control over our TV, for example, because we can switch it “on” and “off”. The Supreme Court’s new understanding of the right to life (as well as liberty and security of the person) is the right to control one’s life either by choosing to continue to live or to die.
This new twist in the meaning of life will require new strategies for the pro-life movement. Life is a gift, not a possession. It is rooted in the living person and not in an external agent. Finally, it is the right not to be killed, and not the right to have power over life.