The Right to Life is a Negative Right

This has been an issue I've been grappling with for a bit, and while at one point I was convinced of my opponent's position, I have since changed my mind. My arguments will center around the morality and thereby the justness of the right to life, as per round #1, "The right to life is a moral principle based on the belief that a human being has the right to live and, in particular, should not to be unjustly killed by another human being". Without a moral qualification, the right to life is useless and meaningless. Morality in this framework will frame "just life" as "moral", and therefore worthy of the "right to life". Absent any proof of "unjust life" being brought into this world, all human life is deemed "just life" and thus worthy of the "right to life". ArgumentsInaction is InjusticePRO proffers a clear train of thought that focuses on the difference between "'killing' and 'letting one die'" and uses this distinction to come to the conclusion that the right to life only protects individuals from the former, and not the latter. According to PRO, killing is an active act, whereas letting one die involves inaction. The problem with this reasoning is that 1) our lives are all intermeshed at the most basic level, and 2) all else being the same, inaction that leads to death is injustice, and so given #1, preventable death is indeed 'unjust' and thereby immoral. If inaction is immoral, then the right to life is not a negative right. None of us choose to come into this world. To think that without this choice, people should be forced to feed, cloth, and shelter themselves, while very realistic, is also wholly bereft of morality, as this force is coercive at the most basic level. Therefore, to think that the right to life does not include such basic necessities to sustain life is to judge all who cannot feed, cloth, and shelter themselves to be immoral individuals, as are the people who condone such a state of affairs. I will demonstrate this reasoning via three examples. NewbornsThink about a newborn. A baby cannot even feed itself without someone there to feed it. According to my opponent, this newborn has the ostensible right to life even though if no one feeds it, it will die of starvation, and that this right to life somehow has significance even when this baby dies of negligence. It is obvious right here that what PRO is proposing as the negative right to life is bereft of morality in this instance; recall that the definition of the right to life is specific in that the right to life is a moral principle, the morality centered upon the simple truism that 'just life' - i. e. , life that can be justifiably maintained - is moral. Therefore, PRO's perspective of the negative right to life is inaccurate and does not adequately describe the right to life in a moral framework. In order to argue against the baby example, PRO must attempt to prove at least one of several arguments:1) The baby is somehow not alive, so killing it is not immoral2) The baby is alive, and allowing babies to die through negligence and inaction is somehow moral3) Life is immoral, so allowing babies to die is moral (this would directly contradict the morality inherent in the right to life). None of these choices are justifiable or consistent with the right to life. By this example alone, the resolution is negated, because it obviates the right to life as a negative right. Indeed, for newborns, the right to life is a strongly positive right. Food MarketsThis interdependency does not cease after a newborn child grows up. We live in a global society now, where demand in one area of the world will affect supply thousands of miles away, and vice versa. While normally this leads to "just" provision of goods world-wide, there are such things as "market failures" that lead to injustices. One very recent market failure dealt specifically with the right to life - food markets. Food markets are global, and food is an absolute necessity to sustain life - without food, people will die. When the US and other nations manipulate food prices, people on the other side of the world die: "Oddly, there had been no drought, the usual cause of malnutrition and hunger in southern Africa. .. The explanation offered by the UN and food experts was that a "perfect storm" of natural and human factors had combined to hyper-inflate prices. US farmers, UN agencies said, had taken millions of acres of land out of production to grow biofuels for vehicles, oil and fertiliser prices had risen steeply, the Chinese were shifting to meat-eating from a vegetarian diet, and climate-change linked droughts were affecting major crop-growing areas. The UN said that an extra 75m people became malnourished because of the price rises. " [1] It is evident that we are interdependent to such an extent that actions that would seem to be prima facie irrelevant to each other cause death on the other side of the world. Such interdependencies necessitate that we recognize that something as harmless as market fluctuations will cause death when none was intended, and that using the justification of inaction is a dangerous myth. Negligence is sometimes deadlier than active coercion, meaning that when it comes to the right to life, inaction is immoral. Car accidentBriefly, think of a car accident where a victim is bleeding on the side of the road. Traffic stops. .. a doctor is amongst those stuck in the road. The doctor ascertains that he can help the victim and save his life. .. but the doctor chooses not to act, because the right to life is ostensibly a negative right. According to PRO, this is moral behavior. I would like to see PRO justify this doctor's inaction. ConclusionI've demonstrated through three examples how inaction is injustice and is thereby immoral, and that the right to life is therefore NOT a negative right. [1] . http://www.theguardian.com...