Right to life

“ The same logic, which I am sure made it satisfactory to the reader, that the right to life must cöexist with the possession—that they are one and inseparable—is applicable in the present case. To be endowed with an abstract right to the pursuit of happiness, and yet endowed with no ability to pursue, is in all respects as barren a privilege as the right to life when one is not. ”

“ It is not you who can bind me; for you and I are equals, and neither in his own name can bind the other. To take your life would be an unjust act; that is, I should rob justice of its right to your life. The right to life is then the right of justice. ”

“ He claims everything that belongs properly to a man: the right to life, the right to work, the right to the complex development of his faculties, to the continuous exercise of his free will and of his reason. ”

“ His right is as clear, as the right to life while it lasts. But the law which gives the planter this right, is a cruel law, and the man who exercises the right, in most cases, is as cruel as the code that sanctions it. ”

“ Hence, he who does an injury to another wrongs not him only, but wrongs his Maker, his Sovereign, and his Judge.
Take any of the rights enumerated as inalienable in the preamble to the Declaration of Independence. Among these is the right to life. This right all men and civil society itself are bound to treat as sacred and inviolable. But all men are created equal, and under the law of nature have equal rights. But how can equals bind one another? ”

“ And it is obvious that by these expressions are clearly meant all essential natural or “unalienable” rights which are necessary to life, safety, liberty and happiness of the individual and which do not interfere with, invade or endanger the life, liberty or happiness of any other individual. The right to “life” of course stands first, and is stated first, because without life we have nothing ”

“ No obstacle to the unfettered enjoyment of those rights which we possess from God in the natural law, and that are guaranteed to us in the Constitution and laws of the land—the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. ”

“ Those rights are inalienable, shorn of which a man cannot work out his last end. Some rights are thus permanently and universally inalienable, as the right to life: others are so occasionally and for particular persons. ”

“ But will the law of nature and of nature’s God approve or allow his conduct? This is the precise question under our consideration. We have seen that the infant, a true human being, has a right to live, as well as its mother. “All men are created equal, and have an equal right to life,” declares the first principle of our liberty. ”

“ The answer to such an argument as this, would be, that it is a natural truth that every man, who ever has been, or ever will be, born into the world, necessarily has been, and necessarily will be, born with an inherent right to life, liberty, and property; and that, in forbidding this right to be impaired, the constitution presupposes, implies, assumes, and asserts that every man has, and will have, such a right ”

“ To continue to vegetate in a state of cowardly dependence upon doctors and special treatments, once the meaning of life, the right to life, has been lost, ought to be regarded with the greatest contempt by society. ”

“ It is not life as mere organic matter that the Constitution cherishes, but the right to human life: the right to live as a human being, to be part of a broader community, to share in the experience of humanity. ”

“ In denying this natural right of individuals, it denies their natural right to live on the earth; and asserts that they have no other right to life than the government, by its own mere will, pleasure, and discretion, may see fit to grant them.
In thus denying man's natural right to life, it of course denies every other natural right of human beings; and asserts that they have no natural right to anything; but that, for all other things, as well as for life itself, they must depend wholly upon the good pleasure and discretion of the government. ”

“ By the same law of nature and reason by which a man has 'a property in his own person,' 'the labour of his body and the work of his hand are properly his' too. Now that the right to free life, which we have already dwelt on, carries with it a certain right to property, to a certain permanent apparatus beyond the bodily organs, for the maintenance and expression of that life, is quite true. ”

“ For my part I have felt very forcibly one great law of nature, the law of self-preservation: the right to live when you have once been born, the right to food and to the pleasures of life, and I determined to survive at all costs. ”

“ Without doubt, it denotes not merely freedom from bodily restraint but also the right of the individual to contract, to engage in any of the common occupations of life, to acquire useful knowledge, to marry, establish a home and bring up children, to worship God according to the dictates of his own conscience, and generally to enjoy those privileges long recognized at common law as essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men. ”

“ Its rights, being clearly those of any other human being, are summed up in the right to live: that is, to have all the conclusive arguments that prove that it would be better dead, that it is a child of wrath, that the population is already excessive, that the pains of life are greater than its pleasures, that its sacrifice in a hospital or laboratory experiment might save millions of lives, etc. ”

“ That we have the latter, is made evident by testimony as magnificent in quantity, as it is melancholy in detail. The truth is, the right to life is in the possession. It is inseparable. If it were; if a man had a right to life after he had been dispossessed ”

“ America will never be whole as long as the right to life granted by our Creator is denied to the unborn. ”

“ — Among the Natural Rights of the Colonists are these First. a Right to Life; Secondly to Liberty; thirdly to Property; together with the Right to support and defend them in the best manner they can - Those are evident Branches of, rather than deductions from the Duty of Self Preservation, commonly called the first Law of Nature -
All Men have a Right to remain in a State of Nature as long as they please: And in case of intollerable Oppression, Civil or Religious, to leave the Society they belong to, and enter into another. ”

“ The government does not give the right to life, nor the right to locomotion, though it protects us all in the exercise of both. We sometimes call the privilege to practise law a right, but this is a mere manner of speaking ”

“ The ground of the right to free life, the reason why a man is secured in the free exercise of his powers through recognition of that exercise by others as something that should be, lay, as we saw, in the conception on the part of everyone who concedes the right to others and to whom it is conceded, of an identity of good for himself and others. It is only as within a society, as a relation between its members, though the society be that of all men, that there can be such a thing as a right ”

“ The right to acquire and possess the fruits of labor—the right of free thought—the right to enjoy the natural relations of life, and the privileges conferred by society—the right to live undisturbed, all are the objects of legal protection; because the attributes of man's nature, unrestrained in the discharge of his duties to his fellow-man, will invade these rights, and hence the necessity of a universal rule of action. All these attributes are susceptible of education as to what is right, and what is wrong ”

“ Everyone shall have the right to the free development of his personality, insofar as he does not infringe the rights of others or offend against the constitutional order or the moral code.
(2) Everyone shall have the right to life and physical inviolability. The freedom of the individual shall be inviolable. These rights may be interfered with only on the basis of a law. ”

“ Hence, there exists no positive right to sacrifice another individual to the preservation of my existence; but neither is it against the conception of rights, that is, it is not in conflict with any positive right of the other to sacrifice his life to the preservation of my own. ”

“ A new responsibility should be created, that of the doctor—the responsibility of ruthlessly suppressing and eliminating degenerate life, in all cases in which the highest interests of life itself, of ascending life, demand such a course—for instance in favour of the right of procreation, in favour of the right of being born, in favour of the right to live. One should die proudly when it is no longer possible to live proudly. ”

“ If a man has any "natural rights," the right to preserve his life and the right to reproduce his kind are certainly such. Yet human societies impose upon their members restrictions in the exercise of both these rights. ”

“ Subjects of law established by an Act shall have the fundamental rights and obligations that by nature not only apply to natural persons.
Article II
Human dignity shall be inviolable. Every human being shall have the right to life and human dignity; embryonic and foetal life shall be subject to protection from the moment of conception. ”

“ The view which gives the right of moral control to the conscience is thus vindicated by the plain fact that there is no other faculty or spring of action in the human constitution adapted to this function, so unquestionably requisite for the order and welfare of life. ”

“ Obedience to this law of not pitting our wills against the wills of other people leads to new freedom in all sorts of ways,—in connection with little, everyday questions, as to whether a thing is one color or another, as well as in the great and serious problems of life. If, in an argument, we feel confident that all we want is the truth,—that we do not care whether we or our opponents are in the right, as long as we find the right itself,—then we are free, so far as personal feeling is concerned ”

“ The distinctive thing about these is that they are not merely rights of one person as against all or some other persons over some thing, or to the performance of or abstention from some action; they are rights of one person as against all other persons to require or prevent a certain behaviour on the part of another. Right to free life is a right on the part of any and every person to claim from all other persons that course of action or forbearance which is necessary to his free life. ”

“ For, though the new element of freedom and an individual has been admitted, yet the primordial atoms are prefigured and predetermined to moral issues, are in search of justice, and ultimate right is done. ”

“ Any human being that is living possesses the right to food, air, light and certain privileges in society; and these are called life rights; that is to say, they are incident to animation, privileges belonging to creatures that live in any measure. The right to live, then, means a just right of existence which cannot be properly taken away. ”

“ The order of castes, and the order of rank merely formulates the supreme law of life itself; the differentiation of the three types is necessary for the maintenance of society, and for enabling higher and highest types to be reared,—the inequality of rights is the only condition of there being rights at all.—A right is a privilege. ”

“ When it proclaims the supreme value of the human soul, and demands for it a right to seek its God, unhindered; when it pleads for protection of the child and the woman, and labours for the day when they shall not need protection from a rapacious society ”

“ And we find that everywhere we can trace it, the social law runs into and conforms with the moral law; that in the life of a community, justice infallibly brings its reward and in559justice its punishment. But this we cannot see in individual life. If we look merely at individual life we cannot see that the laws of the universe have the slightest relation to good or bad, to right or wrong, to just or unjust.68 Shall we then say that the law which is manifest in social life is not true of individual life? ”

“ We have to harmonize the two facts, that wealth is good and necessary, and that wealth is a danger to its possessor and to society. On the one hand property is indispensable to personal freedom, to all higher individuality, and to self-realization; the right to property is a corollary of the right to life; without property men are at the mercy of nature and in bondage to those who have property. ”

“ At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life. ”