The Right to Life and Abortion in the Spanish Constitution: A Comprehensive Analysis
The Right to Life and Abortion in the Spanish Constitution
Conflicting Legal Interests
The legal issues at hand involve the unborn child’s right to life, which intersects with crucial constitutional values such as a woman’s life and dignity. Neither right is absolute. The Constitutional Court, therefore, must weigh these rights and strive for harmony. If impossible, the Court must define the conditions and requirements for one right to prevail.
Grounds for Abortion Under the Spanish Constitution
The Spanish Constitution outlines three cases where abortion is permissible:
- Grave danger to the pregnant woman’s life: This situation significantly threatens the woman’s right to life and physical integrity, justifying the prioritization of maternal health. The potential requirement for significant and lasting health sacrifices under threat of criminal sanction is deemed inadequate.
- Pregnancy resulting from rape: When abortion is performed within the first twelve weeks of a pregnancy resulting from rape, it is acknowledged that the pregnancy originated from an act violating the woman’s will and dignity. This act infringes upon her personal development, physical and moral integrity, honor, self-image, and personal privacy.
- Probable existence of severe physical or mental defects in the fetus: This case recognizes that using criminal sanctions would impose burdens beyond what is reasonably expected of the mother and family. The Constitutional Court deems the existing complaint mechanisms sufficient to fulfill the constitutional requirement of verifying the ethical considerations in such cases.
The Right to Die
?
Unable to admit that the constitution guarantees in Art. 15, the right to own death, and therefore no constitutional support, the claim that coercive medical care is contrary to that constitutional right does not exist.
Does the state’s obligation to protect life even when the owner waives this right? As a result the prison administration has the obligation to protect the lives of inmates.
The Court also notes in this FJ. 7 that is not part of the content of the right to life, the right to own death, that deprivation of life itself is an act not prohibited by law, but in no way an individual right that implies the possibility of mobilizing support of public power to achieve that purpose. Thus the Court states that “can not admit that the Constitution guaranteed in art. 15 the right to own death and therefore no constitutional support the claim that coercive medical care is contrary to that constitutional right does not exist. “
Leads to the conclusion that, from the perspective of the right to life, mandatory medical care authorized by the appeal court decision does not infringe
this fundamental right because it does not include the right to forego life itself, nor is constitutionally required of the prison administration to refrain from providing medical assistance, precisely, is aimed at safeguarding the good life that Article 15 of the Constitution protects “
To the extent that medical care is mandatory in this case manifested as essential to avoid the loss of life of prisoners, subject to a special relationship with the Prison Service subject who is entrusted with the custody of them The Court concluded that restricting the right to physical integrity, in principle, force-feeding by parenteral means, does not degrade the right to be a balanced and proportionate to ensure the right to life “in its objective dimension, is “a higher value of constitutional law” and “ontological assumption without which the right would exist other possible” “
Note the double dimension of life as a value and as a right.
The right to life is recognized and guaranteed in their physical and moral double meaning in art. EC 15 is the projection of a higher value of constitutional law and is the trunked essential and fundamental right as is the ontological assumption without which all other rights have no possible existence.
What peculiarity has the right to life on the other rights recognized in the constitution?
The right to life within our constitutional system is considered the starting point, as the logical and ontological prius for the existence and specification of other duties.
“Fundamental rights are only individual rights? What attitude should show the status on them?
Fundamental rights include not only individual rights of defense of individuals against the state, and institutional guarantees, but also positive duties by the State. The state, when fundamental rights, the legal expression of your value system which is to form the overall legal and political organization, therefore the requirement of submission of all powers to the constitution, not only follows the State’s negative obligation not to injure the individual or institutional sphere, but also a positive duty to contribute to the realization of all rights and values they represent.
Art. 15 EC recognizes the right to life. What life means the constitutional court?
According to the constitutional court, human life is a becoming, a process that begins with gestation, during which a biological reality takes corporeal and sensitive human configuration, and ends in death is a continuum under the effect Time to qualitative changes of somatic and psychological nature that are reflected in the legal status of the individual public and private life.
Is the unborn child the holder the right recognized in the art. 15 CE, the constitution protects “the unborn child? What is clear from the parliamentary debates of the constituents?
The unborn child still protected by art. 15 CE, but you can not claim to be the holder of the fundamental right of life of the unborn child is protected as this embodies a core value of human life guaranteed by art. 15 CE. It is a legal right for which protection in the provision constitutionally.
Parliamentary debates deduce that the term “all” is an open formula is estimated to be enough to make it the defense of the unborn child.
Does the State have any obligation to the unborn child?
The state generally has two obligations, to abstain from interrupting or impeding the natural process of pregnancy, and to establish a legal system for the defense of life that involves effective protection of the same, and that given the fundamental nature of life, also include, as a last guarantee criminal law.
Where recognizes the dignity, the Constitution stands as the Constitutional Court?
The dignity is closely connected with the free development of personality (art. 10 EC) and the rights to physical and moral integrity (art. 15), freedom of ideas and beliefs (Article 16 EC ), to honor, personal and family privacy and reputation (art.), the Constitutional Court refers to these precepts, to deduce that dignity is a moral and spiritual value inherent in the individual which manifests itself uniquely in the self conscious and responsible for his own life and brings with it the claim to respect from others.