Московский журнал международного права (Mar 2009)
New Generation of Human Rights: Somatic Rights
Abstract
Scientific and technological progress, especially in the area of medicine, genetics, biology and chemistry gives a lot of possibilities and raises a lot problem to us. Now one can do euthanasia to himself or to his relatives, can choose the sex of his child, change his own sex. Many questions rise with the use of stem cells and with perspectives of cloning of the human being.So in theory of law now we can speak about new generation of human rights which contains: right to die; human rights concerning its organs and tissues; sexual human rights (to seek, receive and impart information concerning sexuality, sexual education, the choice of a partner, to decide that the man should be sexually active or not, to decide the issue of voluntary sexual relations, marriage, the issue of legalizing prostitution, trafficking in pornography products and regulation situation of sexual minorities); reproductive human rights (positive: in vitro fertilization and negative: abortion, sterilization, contraception); right to change sex; right to clone an organism as a whole and individual organs; right to use drugs and psychotropic substances. UN, UNESCO and Council of Europe create some legal instruments (conventions, declarations etc.) in sphere of regulation of somatic human rights. These instruments are analyzing in the article.