Ruling on Foetus Saves Abortion Laws

The European court of human rights in Strasbourg yesterday refused to declare an unborn child a person with a right to life, averting a ruling which could have thrown abortion laws across Europe into chaos.

A grand chamber of 17 judges ruled, by a majority of 14 to three, that there was no violation of the right to life when a French doctor who mistakenly caused a foetus to be aborted was cleared of manslaughter.

A mark of the importance of the case is that it was heard by the grand chamber, which deals with cases that raise a serious question of interpretation of the European convention on human rights, or those where there is a risk of departing from existing case law.

Britain's Family Planning Association (FPA), and the Centre for Reproductive Rights in New York, both filed written briefs with the court, arguing that giving an unborn child the right to life would conflict with the rights of women and with domestic laws under which a foetus is not treated as a person.

The majority of judges ruled yesterday that the issue of when the right to life begins is a question to be decided at national, not European, level. They said there was no European consensus on the scientific and legal definition of the beginning of life. At best, it could be regarded as common ground in Europe that the embryo and foetus "belong to the human race". Its potential and capacity to become a person required protection in the name of human dignity - without making it a person with the right to life.

The case was brought by Thi-Nho Vo, a 36-year-old French national of Vietnamese origin, from Bourg-en-Bresse, France. In 1991, when she was six months pregnant, she went to the Hotel-Dieu hospital, in Lyons, for an examination. On the same day another patient, Thanh Van Vo, was due to have a coil removed at the hospital.

The pregnant Ms Vo could not speak French and was unable to communicate with the gynaecologist, François Golfier. He mistook her for the other Mrs Vo and tried to remove the non-existent coil, piercing her amniotic sac and making an abortion necessary.

The doctor was charged with unintentional homicide, the French equivalent of involuntary manslaughter, but acquitted on appeal, when the French court of cassation ruled that a foetus was not a human being entitled to the protection of the criminal law.

The judges dismissed Ms Vo's argument that article two imposed a duty on the state to provide for criminal sanction.

The FPA's chief executive, Anne Weyman, said: "The decision will safeguard the laws on abortion widely adopted and protect women's rights to life, health and self determination."