Right to life vs right to found a family: The case of Costa Rica
Costa Rica is being taken to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR) for failing to lift a national ban on IVF, which is sometimes the only medical intervention that can resolve a case of infertility or sub-fertility (1).The Costa Rican law making IVF illegal came into force in 2000. The country's Constitutional Court ruled IVF violated Article Four of the American Convention on Human Rights - 'the right to life' - by defining life from the moment of fertilisation (2). The IACHR orde...