This book explores how disabled people's right to life is understood in different national contexts and the ways in which they are - or are not - afforded protection under the law, emphasizing the social, cultural and historical forces and circumstances which have promoted disabled people's right to life or legitimated its violation.

1. Introduction 2. Life, disability and the pursuit of human rights 3. Cost-effectiveness analysis, preferences and the right to a life with disabilities 4. Persons with disability and the right to life in Australia 5. Disabled people and the right to life 6. Disability rights and resuscitation: Do Not Attempt Reconciliation? 7. Disability, human rights and re-distributive justice 8. Human rights aspects of deaths of institutionalised people with disabilities in Europe 9. The right to life and the selective non-treatment of disabled babies and young children 10. End-of-life decisions in neonatology and the right to life of the disabled newborn child: impressions from the Netherlands 11. The right to life and the right to health of children with disabilities before courts: some Latin American examples 12. Access to care and the right to life of disabled children in Bulgaria 13. Unheard voices: human rights issues of disabled youngsters from Romanian institutions 14. The classification of newborn children: consequences for survival