What is the first human right?

George Weigel writes that

in any proper ordering of rights in the political community, religious freedom will come first. But just as the political community — the state — does not exhaust the meaning of “human community,” civil and political rights are not the only “human rights.” Thus the first “human right” is the right to life from conception until natural death — the right without which civil and political rights, and indeed all other forms of “rights,” are meaningless.

The desperately false idea that some human lives are worth less than others, and thus have less claim on cultural and legal protection than others, is at the root of the abortion license in our countries and is now, at the other end of the life spectrum, infecting public policy toward the elderly.

The product of human conception is a unique human being with a unique genetic identity. Absent tragedy, in the form of miscarriage or lethal intervention, or in the form of abortion, the product of human conception will, in due course, be a mature human being: not a fish, or a bird, or some other form of primate, but a human being. This elementary truth of science is now confirmed daily by sonograms, which allow couples to see that what they have brought into being is a human being, and nothing other than a human being.

The cause of freedom is deeply damaged by reducing human beings, at whatever stage of life and in whatever condition of life, to “useful” or “useless” objects.

We say “yes” to the dignity and beauty and infinite value of every human life, at every stage and in every condition; that is why we say “no” to abortion and euthanasia.

We say “yes” to freedom understood as our capacity to know what is good and to choose what is good freely, as a matter of moral habit; that is why we say “no” to the humanly degrading notion of “freedom” as mere willfulness, as my “choice,” period.

So let us stand fast. Let us stand firm. And in defending and promoting life, let us be the joyful, compelling witnesses to compassion, mercy, and truth that the Risen Christ calls us to be.

Please read more here.