Handicapped Persons and the Rights They Possess: The Right to Life, Liberty, Self-Development, Development of Self

Abstract

The issue of the rights possessed by handicapped human beings is of great theoretical and practical importance. The range of views to be encountered here is considerable. Some see the handicapped as possessing fewer rights than do ordinary persons, the extremely mentally handicapped as possessing no rights at all. Others argue not simply that all handicapped human beings possess rights, but that the handicapped possess special rights, additional to those possessed by those who are not handicapped. Here it will be argued that whilst some very few human beings mentally are so handicapped as to be incapable of being possessors of rights, the great bulk of the handicapped possess rights, the same basic rights as do other persons. Further, it will be maintained that most of the seemingly special rights of the handicapped — they do have special, derivative rights — are simply rights derivative from such basic rights as the rights to life, liberty and self-development which they enjoy in common with those who are not handicapped. The latter rights, to life, liberty, and self-development, are rights of recipience, and not simply negative rights, not to be killed, not to be deprived of one’s liberty, not to be thwarted in one’s self-development. They are rights to positive protection, and more, to aid and assistance in preserving one’s life, in being self-determining and as far as possible master of one’s destiny, and in being effectively self-developing.