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DOI 10.37749/2308-9636-2021-3(219)-2

Halushko V. A. Regulatory considerations of the embryo’s legal status.

A considerable amount of scientific literature related to the legal status of the embryo indicates the urgency of solving the problem caused by the lack of a single view on the question of classifying it as a subject or object of law. The difference between concepts «the legal subject» and «the legal object» is progressively being challenged by the development of medical science and law. The article examines the features inherent to the unborn child for determining its legal nature.

In order to achieve the objectives and as a result of the analysis of international legal acts and approaches, the article provides an overview of the correlation between the embryo and legal capacity as the main basis for classifying something as subjects of law: the paper considers aspects such as legal capacity to have rights, dispositive legal capacity, and delictual dispositive capacity of the embryo, concentrating on the first one. Moreover, such legal category as the live birth of the embryo is subjected to the analysis.

The second assignment of the work lies in determining the objective feature of the embryo. On that account, the study of the object of law features makes it possible to single out the ones inherent to the embryo. The presence of an objective feature is primarily confirmed by the existing legal regulation of an unborn child’s legal status in the world in general and in Ukraine in particular, namely either the mother’s or reproductive technology clinic’s ownership.

Studies have led to the conclusion that the most common approaches of defining the embryo as a subject or object of law have chosen the path of limiting the legal nature of the unborn child since it has both subjective and objective features, which confirms the expediency of classifying the embryo as a special legal category, sui generis.

Key words: legal status of the embryo, legal capacity of the embryo, subject of law, right of the embryo, object of law, ownership of the embryo.

 

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