Question

philosophy: Explain the difference between positive rights and negative rights and how that distinction relates to the abortion debate.

Answer 1

Negative right

Negative rights are absence of obstacles, barriers or constraints. A negative right is a right not to be subjected to an action of another person or group. Negetive rights includes life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Examples are the right to live, to be free, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom from violence, freedom from slavery, and property rights.

Positive right

A positive right is a right to be subjected to an action or another person or group. Positive rights require others to provide you with either a good or service. Positive rights by contrast, obligate you either to provide goods to others, or pay taxes that are used for redistributive purposes.

Examples of positive rights are the rights to free schooling, free healthcare, a job, and a minimum wage. Health care falls into the category of positive right since its provision by the government requires taxation and therefore redistribution.

Positive and negative rights in the context of abortion

​​​​​Abortion is defined as pregnancy termination prior to 20 weeks' gestation or a fetus born weighing less than 500 g. Involuntary pregnancies are that pregnancies resulted from rape or resulted from failed contraception. In involuntary pregnancy a pregnant woman has a negative right not to have her body invaded, and from this negative right derives a positive right to abort her fetus. But at the same time the child has the negative right not to be killed. A voluntary pregnant mother  cannot abort her child without violating its negative right not to be killed, she undertook an obligation not to kill her child.