Embryonic Human Life and Dignity: The French Connection

Dimitrios Tsarapatsanis
Additional contact information
Dimitrios Tsarapatsanis: School of Law, University of Sheffield, Bartolomé House, Winter Street, Sheffield S3 7ND, UK

Laws, 2015, vol. 4, issue 4, 1-16

Abstract: Human dignity is considered by a number of commentators as a normative concept that could potentially bridge the gap between bioethics and human rights. The purpose of this article is to question this assumption insofar as it applies to embryonic human life by way of a case study. The article will chart the way dignity has been historically used in French political and legal debates since the 1990s to attempt to afford constitutional protection to human embryos. It then proposes an interpretation of why such attempts failed, which could have wider significance for current debates.

Keywords: human dignity; bioethics; human embryos; value of human life; Dworkin; Waldron (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D78 E61 E62 F13 F42 F68 K0 K1 K2 K3 K4 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2075-471X/4/4/755/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2075-471X/4/4/755/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jlawss:v:4:y:2015:i:4:p:755-770:d:60150

Access Statistics for this article

Laws is currently edited by Ms. Heather Liang

More articles in Laws from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().