Court rejects appeal to grant human status to foetus

Europe’s top human rights court rejected an appeal today to grant full human rights to a foetus, saying it was up to national governments to decide on the issue.

The European Court of Human Rights said it could not rule on a case filed by a French woman who was forced to have an abortion after a doctor’s mistake.

Thi-Nho Vo complained France had violated the right to life of her unborn child, after French courts refused to convict the doctor of involuntary homicide.

The 17-judge panel in Strasbourg ruled that the issue of when the right to life begins “was a question to be decided at national level … because the issue had not been decided within the majority of states” which have ratified the European Convention on human rights.

The court said that at European level “there was no consensus on the nature and a status of the embryo and/or foetus”.

Vo took the case to the European court after France’s highest court overturned the doctor’s conviction on a charge of involuntary homicide, ruling the foetus was not yet a human being entitled to the protection of criminal law.

In a 14-2 decision, the European Court concluded it “was neither desirable, nor even possible … to answer in the abstract the question whether the unborn child was a person”.

The court’s approach reflected deep differences over abortion across the continent.

The decision was welcomed by a leading abortion rights group that filed arguments warning that accepting a right to life for a foetus could make abortions illegal in all 45 countries that recognise the court’s jurisdiction.

“This was obviously a tragic individual case but we are pleased that the judges have ruled to reject the applicant’s case,” said Anne Weyman, chief executive of the London-based Family Planning Association.

In a statement, Weyman said the “decision will safeguard the laws on abortion which have been widely adopted in the European member states, and will serve to protect women’s rights to life, health, self-determination and equality”.