Innovation or continuity?: Human dignity and protection of life from conception in the new hungarian basic

Abstract

Under Article II of Hungarian Basic Law «Human dignity shall be inviolable. Every human being shall have the right to life and human dignity; embryonic and foetal life shall be subject to protection from the moment of conception». It is evident that, unlike the previous Constitution, the Basic Law expressly mentions the fetal and embryonic life, as also expressly stipulates that it shall be protected from the moment of conception. This new constitutional provision would be for some scholars, not strictly expanding the holders of the right to life, but at least extending the protective cloak of the Constitution to fetal and embryonic life from its beginning, which would effectively exclude outright the possibility of legal abortion at discretion of woman in any event, implying an absence of constitutional guarantee for other mother’s fundamental rights at stake.

The controversy about art. II has been focused not only on the supposed more restrictive approach of the new constitution to abortion, but has reached to the very conception of the right to human dignity, that for some scholars has received a different configuration to the prevailing conception in European law.