In relation to one of the human rights, right to life, most frequently there are, at least, two challenging fields might be brought up, one is death penalty, and the other is termination of pregnancy or abortion. If one intends to comprehend how abortion has been dealt with historically in the western legal tradition one must first come to terms with two quite different but interrelated historical trajectories, the ancient Judeo-Christian condemnation of prenatal homicide as a wrong justifying retribution; and, there is the juristic definition of "crime" in the modern sense of the word.
The EU and Controlling the Use of the Death Penalty: An Organising Principle for Which Fundamental Norm?
