etween a fundamental right and its value and nobility. There are other rights that take on a greater height and nobility to the point that it is right and licit to give or risk one's life for them.
4.2. Protection Before and After Birth
31. Article 3 of the 1948 Declaration states that "Everyone has the right to life". This principle was developed by the Declaration on the Rights of the Child, adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on November 20, 1959, whereby "a child, because of its lack of physical and mental maturity, requires special protection and care, including due legal protection both before and after birth". This same statement was later incorporated into the "Preamble" of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, approved by the United Nations General Assembly on November 20, 1989.
32. This should be considered a fundamental principle of the system of international protection of human rights (ius cogens 36) since it is undoubtedly incorporated into the common conscience of the subjects of the international community.
33. International Law thereby affirms a principle of the Roman-canonical juridical tradition whereby the unborn human individual exists as a person. The rights of the unborn and their personality were already formulated by Ulpian, Justinian, Gratian and other teachers of law since ancient times. Judaic, Christian and Moslem thought converge along these lines.
34. On the other hand, any legislative attempt that presumes to encourage the "right" to abortion or other forms of negating unborn life clashes with what has matured in international legislation. Such legislation is called upon to coherently "guarantee to the unborn the right to come into the world, in the same way to protect the newly born, especially girls, from the crime of infanticide; ...to assure the handicapped that they can fully develop their capacities, and ensure adequate care for the sick and the elderly".37
4.3. The Rights of the Unborn Child
35. In coherence with these guidelines of juridical thought reaffirmed by the international community and its juridical system, we state that:
36. From the first moment of his existence through the fertilization of the ovule, a human being is endowed with his own innate, special dignity and enjoys the rights that correspond to him according to the stage of his development; 38
37. From the beginning of his prenatal life, a human being is an individual who has the right to life and personal safety;
38. From the beginning of his life, a human being has the right to recognition of his juridical personality, with all the consequences derived from such recognition;
39. The unborn person is a "child" in the sense of, and with the attributes set down in the Convention on the Rights of the Child;
40. The unborn child has a right to legislation that guarantees its survival and development to the greatest degree possible; 39
41. The concrete population planning policies or measures that include or imply threats to the survival or health of the unborn child should be considered contrary to the right to life and human dignity;
42. The unborn child has a right to legislation that protects it from any experimentation on its person, or from being subjected to medical procedures that do not have the protection or improvement of its health as their direct object; moreover, the cloning of humans must be prohibited, as well as any other procedure that threatens the dignity of the unborn child: "Life can never be downgraded to the level of a thing.40
4.4. Duties of the Family and the State Toward the Unborn Child
43. The family is the primary institution for the protection of children's rights. For this reason, the child's interest requires its conception to take place in marriage and through the specifically human act of conjugal union. "The gift of human life must be actualized in marriage through the specific and exclusive acts of husband and wife, in accordance with the laws inscribed in their persons and in their union".41
44. The bond between the mother and the conceived child, and the irreplac