Vol. XXXVIII / 1 - Studia Moralia

110 MARTIN MCKEEVER
“It is a human right to choose whether or not to carry a
pregnancy to term”
How is the individual citizen, the legislator or other
interested party to respond concretely to such claims? From
even this brief list, to which one could easily add hundreds of
other examples, it is clear that a blanket acceptance or a blanket
refusal of all human rights claims is not an adequate response.
A pragmatic response must take account of a number of factors
which complicate the question: the proliferation and widening
range of human rights claims, the conflicting nature of some
claims, the forum in which public policy is debated, the limited
nature of available resources, the authority to protect and
enforce human rights claims.
Human rights discourse has become the preferred idiom in
which to press for almost every imaginable kind of social,
political and legal reform or development. One unfortunate
consequence of this is that human rights which concern
survival, and as such merit a certain priority, are discussed in the
same idiom as much less urgent, though quite possibly
legitimate, concerns. The proliferation of human rights claims 9
derives also from the fact that the term has been stretched to
include an ever wider range of subjects (individuals, couples,
families, communities, nations) and an ever wider range of
issues (physical and mental well-being, social conditions,
political structures and processes, gender and ethnic issues).
There is thus a need for a method of distinguishing between
different types of human rights and different degrees of urgency
involved. This is particularly clear in the context of so called
“social rights”, sometimes known as the third generation of
human rights, when limited resources are to be distributed
among individuals and groupings who make rival claims on the
basis of various rights. Faced with such demands it is surely too
easy simply to declare that whole populations have the right to
9
On the consequences of the proliferation of rights claims see L.W.
SUMNER, The Moral Foundations of Human Rights, (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1987).