Zambrano, Pilar - Saunders, William L. (Coords.), Unborn Human Life and Fundamental Rights: Leading Constitutional Cases Under Scrutiny, Peter Lang GmbH, 2019, 264 pages

Abstract

Perhaps at no point since the height of the international push for abortion in the mid-1990’s has the issue of abortion as a “Human Right” taken on such force as it is doing right now. Just this month, abortion has been imposed on Northern Ireland by the UK Parliament in one of the most flagrant abuses of democratic processes in Great Britain’s History. In the Republic of Ireland, pro-life advocates rightly feel that abortion has also been imposed on them by the European Court of Human Rights. In Jamaica, Poland, Croatia and many other countries around the world, the issue of abortion is currently (or at least very recently been) at the centre of political discourse. Philosophically and morally, there are few issues which approach the question of defining the substance of what is being argued in such polarising terms as with the abortion debate. The question of whether the unborn child is a human life worthy of protection should be a binary yes or no. Instead, the issue has taken on a life of its own, bringing with it questions of personal and physical autonomy, science, religion, and the worth we should afford to the most vulnerable of our fellow human beings, the unborn child...