Өмір құқығы: мағынасы мен қолданылуы

Belief that a being should not be killed by another entity

The right to life is the belief that a human or other animal has the right to live and, in particular, should not be killed by another entity. The concept of a right to life arises in debates on issues including capital punishment, with some people seeing it as immoral; abortion, with some seeing the fetus as a human being in an early state of development whose life should not be ended; euthanasia, where the decision to end one's life outside of natural means is seen as incorrect; meat production and consumption, where the breeding and killing of animals for their meat is seen by some people as an infringement on their rights; and in killings by law enforcement, which is seen by some as an infringement of a person's right to live. Various individuals may disagree in which of these areas the principle of a right to life might apply.

Some utilitarian ethicists argue that the "right to life", where it exists, depends on conditions other than membership of the human species. The philosopher Peter Singer is a notable proponent of this argument. For Singer, the right to life is grounded in the ability to plan and anticipate one's future. This extends the concept to non human animals, such as other apes, but since the unborn, infants and severely disabled people lack this, he states that abortion, painless infanticide and euthanasia can be "justified" (but are not obligatory) in certain special circumstances, for instance in the case of a disabled infant whose life would be one of suffering. Bioethicists associated with disability rights and disability studies communities have argued that Singer's epistemology is based on ableist conceptions of disability.

The International Human Rights Standards for Law Enforcement has created a system whereby it is recognised that international human rights law is binding upon all state actors, and that said state actors must know and be capable of applying international standards for human rights. The right to life is for the most part an inalienable right granted to every human upon the planet, however, there are certain situations in which state actors are required to take drastic action, which can result in civilians being killed by law enforcement agents. Appropriate occasions for killings by law enforcement are strictly outlined by the International Human Rights Standards for Law Enforcement. Any lethal action taken by law enforcement agents must be taken following a certain set of rules that have been set out in the 'Use of Force' section of the Pocket Book on Human Rights for the Police. One of these model policies states that law enforcement agents will engage in reasonable necessary force to efficiently bring a scenario to a conclusion, giving specific thought to both the safety of themselves and other civilians. Law enforcement officers are given the prerogative to engage in department approved methods to safely bring a conclusion to a scenario and are also given the ability to use issued equipment to resolve issues in scenarios where they are required to protect themselves or others from damage, to bring resistant individuals under control, or to safely conclude unlawful incidents. There is no mention as to what "reasonably necessary" should be interpreted as meaning, but there is reference made to the reasonable man method of determining how one should approach a scenario. However, it has been highlighted through events such as the killing of Michael Brown by Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri, which resulted in public unrest, that there is confusion and debate surrounding the use of firearms and lethal force. The 'Procedure for the Use of Firearms' section provides the process through which law enforcement agents must progress when using firearms. It states that they must identify themselves as a law enforcement agent, issue a clear warning, and give an adequate amount of time for response (providing that time would not likely result in harm being done to the agent or other civilians) before deadly force can be used within the bounds of international law. While the Pocket Book on Human Rights for the Police outlines the academic circumstances under which law enforcement agents may use lethal force, the literal scenarios in which police killings have occurred are also relevant. Rosenfeld states that there is considerable literature that gives reason to believe that social conditions also have a part to play in how law enforcement killings can occur. Rosenfeld states that there are numerous studies that have been conducted which link law enforcement agents' use of lethal force to the area's rate of violent crime, the size of the non indigenous population and the socioeconomic position of the community concerned. Appropriating a blanket description of how police killings can occur across the board is difficult given the vast differences in social context from state to state. Perry, Hall and Hall discuss the phenomena across the United States of America which became highly charged and widely documented in late 2014, referring to the use of lethal force from white police officers on unarmed black male civilians. There is no legal prerogative which gives law enforcement agents the ability to use lethal force based on the race of the person they are dealing with, there is only a legal prerogative to engage in lethal force if there is a reasonable fear for your life or the lives of others. However, the Propublica analysis of federal data on fatal police shootings between 2010 and 2012, showed that young black male civilians were 21 times more likely to be killed by police than young white male civilians. The use of lethal force from law enforcement agents in the United States created widespread feeling amongst US citizens that they were not being protected by the police. The justice system mostly found that these agents acted within the boundaries of the law because the actions of the people who were shot were judged to be sufficiently questionable in character for the police officer to fear for their own life or the lives of others. Coppolo investigated Connecticut law and reported that the use of lethal force must be followed by a report that determines whether the law enforcement agent's lethal force was proportionately necessary in the circumstances. Coppolo also stated that a reasonable lethal response must only be made when there is a reasonable belief that the facts you have been presented with could realistically result in a risk of death or grievous bodily harm.

In Animal Liberation, Peter Singer writes that the killing of animals for the consumption of their meat should be seen as immoral and a violation of their right to life. He holds that rights should be based on sentience, rather than species membership. Numerous authors have invoked the argument from marginal cases to argue that animals should have similar moral status to human infants, senile people, the comatose, and cognitively disabled people. A 2020 survey of 1812 published English language philosophers found that 48% said it was permissible to eat animals in ordinary circumstances, while 45% said it was not.

Those who believe a person should be able to make the decision to end their own life through euthanasia use the argument that persons have a right to choose, while those who oppose the legalization of euthanasia argue so on the grounds that all persons have a right to life, which they interpret as an obligation to live. They are commonly referred to as right to lifers. The European Convention on Human Rights defended the possibility of the existence of a “right to die” through the application of euthanasia and granting the individual the right to choose the method of implementing this type of dying, considering that the latter is one of the parts of the right to life.