¹ See Toni Selkälä & Mikko Rajavuori chapter in this volume, 18 German L.J. (2017).Google Scholar

² See id. Google Scholar

³ Of course, the technology cannot guarantee a child to prospective parents. Yet, it cannot be denied that human reproduction has become more at our disposal, and because of this, there is a strong felt responsibility toward unborn and future children.Google Scholar

⁴ Guido Pennings et al., ESHRE Task Force on Ethics and Law 13: The Welfare of the Child in Medically Assisted Reproduction, 22 Hum. Reprod. 2585, 2585 (2007).Google Scholar

⁵ See J.H.H.M. Dorscheidt, Developments in Legal and Medical Practice Regarding the Unborn Child and the Need to Expand Prenatal Legal Protection, 17 Eur. J. Health L. 433, 442 (2010).Google Scholar

⁶ See, e.g., E.A.J. Beveridge et al., What Protection for the Unborn Child of a Psychologically Vulnerable Adult?, 96 J. R. Soc. Med. 92 (2003); see Kenneth McK. Norrie, Protecting the Unborn Child from its Drug of Alcohol Abusing mother, in Law and Medicine: Current Legal Issues 223 (Michael Freeman & Andrew Lewis eds., 2000); see Prevention, Project, http://www.projectprevention.org/. Also, Wicks acknowledges that even though the behavior of pregnant women is barely regulated in the United Kingdom, “it is an issue often debated in legal circles.” Elizabeth Wicks, The State And The Body: Legal Regulation Of Bodily Autonomy 42 (2016). Moreover, as Tuo Yu's contribution points out, the Chinese legal system is also confronted with the demand for more legal protection of the unborn child. See Tuo Yu chapter in this volume, 18 German L.J. (2017).Google Scholar

⁷ Several jurisdictions have addressed the question of whether alcohol or drug abuse during the pregnancy can be criminalized. For example, in the UK, a test case in which a girl suffering from damage caused by her mother's drinking during the pregnancy claimed that she was entitled to payments from the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority. This case triggered the question of whether alcohol abuse during the pregnancy constitutes a criminal act. The claim, however, was rejected. See CP (a Child) v. First-tier Tribunal (Criminal Injuries Compensation) (2014) EWCA Civ 1554. In 2014, the US state of Tennessee enacted the Fetal Assault law, which permitted women to be prosecuted if they illegally used drugs while pregnant and their child was born addicted or harmed because of the drug abuse. Due to a sunset clause, the law remained in effect until July 2016.Google Scholar

⁸ See Dorscheidt, supra note 5 (providing a more elaborate discussion of this topic).Google Scholar

⁹ In Dutch: “Het kind waarvan een vrouw zwanger is wordt als reeds geboren aangemerkt, zo dikwijls zijn belang dit vordert. Komt het dood ter wereld, dan wordt het geacht nooit te hebben bestaan.”Google Scholar

¹⁰ Similar cases appeared in other jurisdictions with different outcomes. For example, in St George's Healthcare NHS Trust v S; R v Collins and others ex parte S (1998) 2 FLR 728, a pregnant woman refused highly recommended treatment and was admitted to a psychiatric hospital against her will. The British Court, however, laid the emphasis on the mother's autonomy and her right to refuse medical treatment. See generally Melissa Nau et al., Psychotic Denial of Pregnancy: Legal and Treatment Considerations for Clinicians, 39 J. Am. Acad. Psychiatry L. 31 (2011) (discussing the approach of this topic in the United States).Google Scholar

¹¹ In Dutch: “een of meer anderen.”Google Scholar

¹² See District Court Amsterdam April 25, 2000, kBJ 2000/47, H.J.J. Leenen; see District Court Amsterdam February 21, 2006, Bj 2007/6, J.K.M. Gevers (following the judgment in kBJ 2000/47). In another case, the pregnant woman was not admitted because addiction itself does not constitute a mental illness, but the judge emphasized the importance of protecting the unborn child against maternal harm. See District Court Amsterdam April 6, 2005, Bj 2005/19, W. Dijkers,Google Scholar

¹³ See Leenen, supra note 12; Dijkers, supra note 12; Gevers, supra note 12.Google Scholar

¹⁴ Two years after Leenen's annotation, the ECHR left a little bit more wiggle room in the Vo case. In that case, it refused to answer the question of whether the term “everyone” in Article 2 of the Convention also included an unborn child. The Court left it up to the member states to decide on the legal status of unborn life. See Vo v. France, App. No. 53924/00, para. 85 (Jul. 8, 2004), http://hudoc.echr.coe.int/.Google Scholar

¹⁵ Beveridge, supra note 6, at 92.Google Scholar

¹⁶ There was no legal ground not only because the unborn child has no legal rights, but also because the patient did not have a mental condition that could justify the compulsory admission. Also in other areas of UK law, it is assumed that the unborn child's lack of legal personality prevents it from being regarded as “another person.” See CP (a Child) v First-tier tribunal (Criminal Injuries Compensation), supra note 7, para. 39.Google Scholar

¹⁷ See Gevers, supra note 12.Google Scholar

¹⁸ See Dorscheidt, supra note 5, at 444; Gevers, supra note 12, at 66; see Sijmons, J.G., Reactie op FJR 2009, 3, 31 Tijdschrift voor familie en jeugdrecht 15, 16 (2009).Google Scholar

¹⁹ See Gevers, supra note 12, at 66.Google Scholar

²⁰ See Dijkers, supra note 12.Google Scholar

²¹ Interestingly, contrary to what Flinterman argues, Article 1:2 CC does not directly state that the future child is deemed to be a legal-person whenever its interests require this. Instead, it is considered to be born. Of course, according to legal doctrine, legal personality coincides with the biological birth and as Van Beers has pointed out, the only benefit the unborn child could gain from being considered to already be born, is to be considered a legal person. See Britta van Beers, Persoon en lichaam in het recht. Menselijke waardigheid en zelfbeschikking in het tijdperk van de medische biotechnologie 231 (2009).Google Scholar

²² See Flinterman, Dia, Het ongeboren recht op ongeschonden bestaan. Jeugdbescherming en jeugdstrafrecht nader bekeken, in Honderd jaar zorg om het kind 73, 75 (A.P. van der Linden ed., 2006).Google Scholar

²³ District Court Dordrecht February, 7 2012, JPF 2012/82, P. Vlaardingerbroek.Google Scholar

²⁴ See Dijkers, supra note 12, 125; see Gevers, supra note 12, at 66.Google Scholar

²⁵ See M.W. Bijlsma et al., De mogelijkheid van ondertoezichtstelling van het nog ongeboren kind bij twijfels over de veiligheid van de thuissituatie, 152 Nederlands Tijdschrift voor Geneeskunde 895, 898 (2008).Google Scholar

²⁶ See Sluyters, B., Civielrechtelijke aansprakelijkheid voor medische fouten voor de geboorte, in Grenzen aan de Zorg; Zorgen aan de Grens 133, 134 (J.K.M. Gevers & J.H. Hubben eds., 1990).Google Scholar

²⁷ See H.J.J. Leenen et al., Handboek Gezondheidsrecht 348 (2014).Google Scholar

²⁸ See Asser 1*, Personen- en Familierecht § 1 Section no. 23 (J. de Boer ed., 2010); see Wibren van der Burg, De juridische ‘status’ van het embryo: een op drift geraakte fictie, Tijdschrift voor gezondheidsrecht 386, 388 (1994).Google Scholar

²⁹ Vlaardingerbroek, supra note 23.Google Scholar

³⁰ See Leenen, supra note 27, at 352.Google Scholar

³¹ See Blankman, K., Reactie op FJR 2009, 3, 31 Tijdschrift voor familie en jeugdrecht 13, 13–14 (2009).Google Scholar

³² See Vlaardingerbroek, supra note 23.Google Scholar

³³ See Van der Burg, supra note 28, at 393–94. Due the new developments, it seems that nowadays it is possible to push the mother into a certain life style by controlling her behavior.Google Scholar

³⁴ See also Flinterman, supra note 22, at 75.Google Scholar

³⁵ Of course, the possibility remains that for some reason, the child is stillborn.Google Scholar

³⁶ It is at this point that two different perspectives on unborn life become clear. Certain actions, such as (late term) abortion or selling embryos are prohibited or heavily restricted in order to protect the embryo itself. Because of the inherent value of the embryo, whether because it has human dignity or because it is part of human life, the embryo itself challenges the person-thing distinction, as has been elaborated by Selkälä and Rajavuori in the introduction. See Selkälä and Rajavuori, supra note 1. However, other actions, like the mother's behavior, are regulated or controlled, or an attempt is made to do so, not because of the need to protect the embryo, but to protect the child that will be born in the future and that, at that moment, will suffer from the negative consequences of these actions.Google Scholar

³⁷ See Asser 1*, supra note 28, no 21.Google Scholar

³⁸ See Beers, Van, supra note 21, at 231.Google Scholar

³⁹ For example, in the Baby Kelly case, the fiction was used. Importantly, the Baby Kelly case was not about prenatal harm, but about wrongful life. In UK law, the nasciturus principle is also used to award damages in case of prenatal injury or other types of prenatal harm. See Norrie, supra note 6, at 225.Google Scholar

⁴⁰ It is clear that the fiction pertains to property law. See Asser 1*, supra note 28, at no. 23. Also in other legal systems, the nasciturus fiction is often invoked in the context of monetary interests. See, for example, §1923 abs. 2 of the German Civil Code, which enables an unborn child to inheret from someone who died before its birth. Also Tuo Yu has pointed out the nasciturus fiction at least pertains to monetary interests. See Yu, supra note 6.Google Scholar

⁴¹ See Sijmons, supra note 18, at 15–16; see Flinterman, supra note 22, at 76; see R.J.P Kottenhagen, Botsende rechten van moeder en ongeboren kind, Tijdschrift voor gezondheidsrecht 492, 498 (2008).Google Scholar

⁴² According to Norrie, the nasciturus principle endorsed in UK law also requires the child to be born alive. See Norrie, supra note 6, at 228. The requirement that the child has to be born alive in order to apply the fiction is also pointed out in the contribution of Tuo Yu regarding Chinese succession law. See Yu, supra note 6.Google Scholar

⁴³ Of special interest in this respect is Kottenhagen. He claims that with the help of a proactive interpretation of the nasciturus fiction, the legal duty of parents to take care of their children and secure that physical and mental wellbeing can be applied to the unborn child. As a result, once a pregnant woman does not choose for abortion, but chooses to bring the child into existence, she also accepts the moral and legal duty to take care of her unborn child and accept adequate, prenatal care. See Kottenhagen, supra note 41, at 499. This, however, is an even further expansion of legal personhood and the status of the unborn child. The unborn child in Kottenhagen reasoning is not treated as an entity that will exist in the future and whose interests need to be anticipated; instead, accepting a legal duty to prenatal care in order to bring the child into existence pertains to the unborn child as a fetus and therefore, implies an enormous increase of the legal status of the embryo, rather than the unborn child.Google Scholar

⁴⁴ In other jurisdictions, the interest or the welfare of the child is taken into account in decision making on the application of fertility treatments and Assisted Reproductive Technologies. One example is section 13(5) of the British Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 2008: “A woman shall not be provided with treatment services unless account has been taken of the welfare of any child who may be born as a result of the treatment.” Also in the ECtHR case S.H. e.a. v. Austria, the interests of the future child were considered an important factor in the regulation of Assisted Reproduction Technologies. See S.H. e.a. v. Austria, App. No. 57813/00, paras. 101, 105, 113 (Nov. 3, 2011), http://hudoc.echr.coe.int/.Google Scholar

⁴⁵ See NVOG Modelprotocol: Mogelijke morele contra-indicaties bij vruchtbaarheidsbehandelingen (2010).Google Scholar

⁴⁶ The professional guidelines argue that this standard offers the right balance between the prospective parents' interests and right to family life and the physicians duty to provide decent health care. After all, with regard to reproductive treatments, the involved physicians have a double responsibility and must take care of the interests of both the mother and the child. The responsibility towards the future child requires that the physician does more than only securing the minimum for the child. Moreover, the professional guidelines argue that the standard of a decent chance to reasonable welfare is also internationally preferred. See NVOG Modelprotocol, supra note 45, at 2, 3.Google Scholar

⁴⁷ See Parliamentary Documents “Kamerstukken II 2005-2006, 30 300 XVI, nr 136,” 1.Google Scholar

⁴⁸ The creation of savior siblings, or selection on HLA-type is only allowed if the procedure is necessary in the first place to select on the genetic condition for which a donor is necessary. So, only when the future child itself runs a risk to have the same genetic condition as its ill sibling which justifies the PGD process, then additional selection is allowed.Google Scholar

⁴⁹ See Blankman, supra note 31, at 14.Google Scholar

⁵⁰ See also Art. 7:465 BW.Google Scholar

⁵¹ “Partij van de Arbeid.”Google Scholar

⁵² See Parliamentary Documents “Kamerstukken II 2009-2010, 32 405 nr. 2.”Google Scholar

⁵³ See Boonekamp, J., G. de Wert, R. Bergmans, Geef een junk geld voor geboortebeperking, NRC November 9, 2010; N. Smet, Als je haar kind afpakt, neemt ze meteen een nieuwe, NRC next September 2, 2011; Zembla: Vader en moeder: ongeschikt', VARA Nederland 2, April 13, 2012 (featuring a Dutch tv show on this topic); Wij, rechters, willen een wet die verplichte anticonceptie mogelijk maakt, NRC Handelsblad maart 4, 2015; Verplichte anticonceptie bij falende ouders, Algemeen Dagblad April 17,2015; ‘Verplicht kwetsbare ouder tot tijdelijke anticonceptie’, Volkskrant oktober 1, 2016; Rotterdam: verplicht spiraaltje bij incompetente ouders, Algemeen Dagblad oktober 2, 2016.Google Scholar

⁵⁴ Forced sterilization has been condemned by the European Court of Human Rights as a violation of Articles 3 and 8. See V.C. v. Slovakia, App. No. 18968/07, (Nov. 8, 2011), http://hudoc.echr.coe.int/. Nonetheless, the case presented before the European Court differs in two important aspect from the Dutch debate on compulsory contraception. First, the European Court of Human Rights did not have to address the question of whether forced contraception could be justified in order to protect the interests and wellbeing of the future child, as argued by the Dutch proponents of compulsory contraception. Second, the proposals in the Dutch debate pertain to a temporary, reversible form of contraception instead of sterilization.Google Scholar

⁵⁵ See, e.g., Robertson, John A., Children of Choice: Freedom and the New Reproductive Technologies 75 (1994); Allen Buchanan et al., From Chance to Choice 239 (2009); Stephen Wilkinson, Choosing Tomorrow's Children: The Ethics of Selective Reproduction 70–71, 97 (2010); I. Glenn Cohen, Regulating Reproduction: The Problem with Best Interests, 96 Minn. L. Rev. 423, 439 (2011); P.G. Peters, Protecting the Unconceived: Nonexistence, Avoidability, and Reproductive Technology, 31 Ari. L. Rev. 487, 487 (1989).Google Scholar

⁵⁶ See Cohen, supra note 55, at 472–73; Joel Feinberg, Wrongful Life and the Counterfactual Element in Harming, in Freedom and Fulfillment: Philosophical Essays 3, 17 (Joel Feinberg ed., 1994); Buchanan et al., supra note 55, at 239; Wilkinson, supra note 55, at 71; Julian Savulescu, Is there a Right not to be Born? Reproductive Decision Making, Options and the Right to Information, 28 J. Med. Ethics 65 (2002).Google Scholar

⁵⁷ See NVOG Modelprotocol, supra note 45, at 2. Importantly, it is highly unlikely that a same standard would be endorsed if a compulsory contraception measure ever would become reality because the higher standard used in the context of ARTs is considered justified due to the responsibility of the physician towards the child that would result from the treatment.Google Scholar

⁵⁸ Glenn Cohen has pointed out that in different legislation in which the future child's existence is prevented, it is justified with an appeal to the future child's interests. He also points out the problematic nature of this appeal, as it cannot be said that the future child in all these cases actually has an interest in its own non-existence. See generally Cohen, supra note 55.Google Scholar

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⁷⁰ Regan distinguishes two definitions of “having an interest.” The first is a more subjective interpretation and can be understood as “taking an interest in.” What is in the subject's interest is then defined by the subject's desires and wishes. The second interpretation takes a more objective approach; to say that someone has an interest in X means that X benefits this person, connecting interest to the subject's wellbeing. The second approach is similar to the definition of interest used here. See Regan, T., McCloskey on Why Animals Cannot Have Rights, 26 Phil. Q. 251, 253–54 (1976).Google Scholar

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⁷⁷ See Wiggers-Rust, supra note 65 (explaining the concept of interests in Dutch administrative and private law in general).Google Scholar

⁷⁸ See HR March 18, 2005, NJ 2006, 606 (Neth.) (Baby Kelly).Google Scholar

⁷⁹ See id. para. 4.13, 4.16. As a result of this, Dutch legal doctrine does not allow a child to bring a wrongful life claim against the parents. After all, Kelly's interest in non-existence depends on her mother intention to abort her if she had all the information. Without the mother's intention to abort Kelly, Kelly would not have an interest in her own existence.Google Scholar

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¹⁰⁵ See supra notes 56 and 58.Google Scholar