“Human Life is Inviolable”: Costa Rica’s Human Rights Crucible

ABSTRACT

The Costa Rican Constitutional Court banned in vitro fertilization in 2000, citing the inviolability of life. Conservatives hoped the ban would initiate a hemispheric movement to protect the unborn. But in 2012 the Inter-American Court of Human Rights ruled that reproductive rights are human rights and that women’s rights take precedence over embryo rights. The episode precipitated a national identity crisis: how could a country that supports universal health care be labeled a human rights violator as a result of its efforts to protect nascent human life? Expanding the health and human rights framework helps us appreciate how IVF became Costa Rica’s human rights crucible.

SPANISH ABSTRACT

La Sala Constitucional de la Corte Suprema de Justicia de Costa Rica prohibió la fecundación in vitro en el año 2000, citando la inviolabilidad de la vida. Los conservadores esperaban que la prohibición iniciara un movimiento hemisférico para proteger a los no nacidos. Pero en 2012 la Corte Inter-Americana de Derechos Humanos dictaminó que los derechos reproductivos son derechos humanos y que los derechos de las mujeres tienen prioridad sobre los derechos de los embriones. El episodio precipitó una crisis de identidad nacional: ¿cómo podría un país que ofrece la atención universal de la salud ser calificado de violador de los derechos humanos como resultado de sus esfuerzos por proteger la naciente vida humana? El marco de salud y derechos humanos podría expandirse para apreciar cómo la FIV se convirtió en el crisol de los derechos humanos de Costa Rica.

KEYWORDS:

• Costa Rica
• health rights
• human rights
• in vitro fertilization

PALABRAS CLAVE:

• Costa Rica
• derechos de salud
• derechos humanos
• la fecundación in vitro

Acknowledgments

All translations from Spanish are by the author. Thanks are due to Laura Briggs, María Carranza, Alejandro Cerón, Jessica Jerome, Elizabeth F. S. Roberts, Elyse Singer, and James Trostle for feedback.

Notes

1. A full explanation of the system and its history can be found on the website of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights; http://www.oas.org/en/iachr/mandate/Basics/intro.asp.

2. Personal communication, February 6, 2014.

3. For legal analyses of the ruling, see Adriasola 2013; Brena 2013; de Jesús, Oviedo Álvarez, and Tozzi 2013; Dulitzky and Zimmerman 2013; Declaración de Guanajuato sobre Fecundación in Vitro 2013; Guerra 2014; Hevia and Herrera Vacaflor 2013a, 2013b; Laffarriere 2013; Leal 2013; Lemaitre and Sieder 2017; Paúl Díaz 2013; Ramírez 2013; Rosales 2013; Sánchez Martínez 2013; Zamora 2013b; Zegers Hochschild, Dickens and Dughman Manzur 2011.

Additional information

Funding

Support was provided by a Weatherhead Fellowship at the School for Advanced Research and by Mount Holyoke College.

Notes on contributors

Lynn M. Morgan

Lynn M. Morgan is Mary E. Woolley professor of Anthropology at Mount Holyoke College and author of Icons of Life: A Cultural History of Human Embryos (University of California Press, 2009) and co-editor of Fetal Subjects, Feminist Positions (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999).