"Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person"

Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 3

"No person shall be deprived of his life or personal liberty except according to procedure established by law"

Article 21 of the Indian Constitution

That we all have a right to life seems fundamental and obvious, scarcely necessary to set it down in something so formal as a Universal Declaration or a Constitution. But it is the most basic of all rights, and neither as obvious nor as simple as it may appear. The right to existence leads to questions about the quality of that existence, the freedom to make choices, the right to decide.

These stories put some of those questions into an Indian context.

Female infanticide has crept into Indian society like never before. With the advancements in medical science helping to quicken the pace of foeticide, thousands of girls are denied the right to be born.

Hindustan Times, 12.10.00
http://www.hindustantimes.com/nonfram/121000/detNAT02.asp

The story quotes a report from the Mahbub ul Haq Human Development Centre in Islamabad, which says the low status of women has much to do with the spread of this horrifying practice. It says the techniques developed to discover birth defects are being used "to determine the sex - and therefore the life and death - of the child before birth." Infant girls are killed by feeding them poisoned milk, by stuffing coarse grain into their mouths, by giving them poisonous plant extracts or by suffocating them.

Dharmapuri district (Tamil Nadu) also figures prominently in snuffing out the lives of female infants...

The Dharmapuri district administration have resorted to striking fear among those resorting to such a practice by regularly booking cases against reported infanticide. In fact, this year until March, the police had booked about three cases, exhumed the bodies and sent them for post mortem.

The Hindu, 15.5.00

A woman committed 'sati' on her husband's funeral pyre.
A section of society considers this the highest form of devotion, saying that once the husband is dead, the woman has no one to live for. Others feel that in these changed times, a widow has many options and sati is an inhuman practice that must be stopped.

Indian Express, 16.11.99

When a Pune couple wanted to adopt a second girl, the judges ruled against it even though the petitioners' plea was based on the premise that their right to life was being impinged upon. The story noted that Article 21 of the Indian Constitution deals with Right to Life, "which in turn includes right to decide the size of the family."

Indian Express, 4.12.97

A Bombay High Court decision has freed adoption from the clutches of religion… Justice F.I.Rebellow held that "the fundamental right to life for an orphaned, abandoned and a similarly placed child includes the right to be adopted by parents, to have a home, a name, a nationality, and this is an enforceable right, justiciable through a civil court. "

Indian Express, 14.11.99

Two men in Kerala asked the High Court for permission to voluntarily put an end to their lives. They said that their families were well-settled and they themselves had no desire to continue living, and they argued: "The freedom to choose the method of one's death is a part of the right to life." The court did not agree.

New Indian Express, 29.6.00

Issues Related to Right to Life:

• Euthanasia
  
• Suicide
  
• Capital Punishment
  
• Abortion
  
• Infanticide/foeticide/selective abortion
  
• Foetal tissue research.

Abortion
In India, the Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act allows induced abortions only if the life of the mother is in danger, there are medically approved reasons affecting the child or the mother's health, or if the pregnancy is the result of rape. The Act is honoured more in the breach. In 1991-2, according to the Lancet, some 6.7 million abortions were perfomed. Only 600,000 of them were legal. [Official policy to limit India's huge population growth, the preference for sons and other socio-economic reasons seen in the stories about infanticide, foeticide and selective abortion throw more light on this phenomenon. See also section on discrimination against women]

Right to Life movements in the USA, the UK and elsewhere are committed to protecting the life of all innocent human beings, born and unborn. Which is the key to their main platform. Their movement has taken impetus from the intense debate in those countries about abortion, although that is not their only concern, and derives from the conviction that the right to life begins at the moment of fertilisation. They are opposed by other pressure groups which argue that life begins at birth, and that a woman has the right to make her own decisions about her body.

Infanticide/foeticide/selective abortion

A monograph on the subject by Sharada Natarajan brought out by the M. S. Swaminathan Research Foundation [MSSRF], Chennai, cites some of the reasons offered for female foetal infanticide:

The curious notion that a child attains personhood only after it is given its first ritual bath-most killings take place before the baby is 7-10 days old;

A woman without sons is considered barren in Tamil Nadu;

If a girl given in adoption is 'spoilt' - i.e. 'led astray' or even raped - that is considered a greater blemish on the birth family's reputation than the killing of the infant;

Ritual expenses are a greater liability for a girl child-- ear-piercing ceremony, cradling, coming of age, marriage, setting up house, pregnancy and delivery costs and so on.

The rise in demands for dowry payments, even in communities which earlier paid a brideprice, and the increase in the amount demanded;

Women's frustration with their own lives, says the monograph, leads to repeated claims that it is better to kill a baby girl when she is 'unmoulded earth' (paccha mannu in Tamil) than to let her live a life of hardship.

The worth of the girl child therefore has to be constantly reinforced.

Improving access to education and healthcare for women and children, raising income-generation opportunities and capacity-building, apart from fighting beliefs and customs that propagate blind superstition, are some of the ways in which the the girl child can be shown as equal to boys.

Euthanasia

"All human life until the time of natural death has immeasurable dignity and an inalienable right to life. Assisted suicide and euthanasia are not isolated events. By their nature, they will require medical professionals to be arbiters of life and death, deciding whose life is worthwhile. Legalising suicide will also have untold consequences on vulnerable groups of people. Elderly adults already have the highest rates of suicide. If death becomes an option, many who feel they are a 'burden' to their families may opt to 'get out of the way'. "Legalizing death could easily glamorize it in the eyes of our youth… Societal acceptance will eventually lead to social preference for some to die." Right to Life, Michigan, USA.

Mark O'Brien, a quadriplegic who lives in an iron lung for all but one or two hours a week, says in a Pro-Life webpage [www.rtl.org/html/faqs.html ] that "it is usually the poor, elderly and disabled who are sacrificed to keep medical costs low". He notes that Dr Jack Kevorkian, an American doctor who has has assisted in the suicide of 41 people, asked his critics to consider the quality of life of high quads--patients who have suffered an injury high up in the spinal cord-- living on ventilators. O'Brien refutes the argument by describing his own life: he is a poet and freelance writer with a beautiful home, happy with his life and 'couldn't ask for more', he says. He is a member of Not Dead Yet, which strongly opposes killing of the disabled.

'Not Dead Yet' is an activist organisation fighting the legalisation of euthanasia in the USA

Foetal Tissue Research
Right to Life pressure groups specify that they are not against research conducted on the foetuses from spontaneous abortions or ectopic pregnancies but hold that other cases infringe the right to life. The debate has become more intense with the development of gene technology, which makes possible the genetic modification of foetuses - natural and artificially produced - for medical and other purposes.

A predominant pro-life movement is the International Right to Life Federation affiliated to the WHO. The beginning of this movement in India (see in Contacts: National Association for Respect for Life, Bangalore) dates back to 1986. Its avowed aim is to 'promote and foster life at all stages and to act against all that would lessen human dignity'.

Capital Punishment has been abolished in many countries but is still used as a deterrent in India and the USA. The Peoples' Union for Civil Liberties [PUCL] is a national organisation that advocates abolition of capital punishment in India.