Home birth and human rights: Lithuania's turn

In this column I have discussed legal cases presented to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) that are concerned with whether having a home birth can be considered a human right (Symon, 2018). The case of Pojatina v Croatia [2018] relied on a finding from a Hungarian case, Ternovsky v Hungary [2010]. The same reasoning has now been heard in a similar case involving four women from Lithuania whose judgement has just been handed down (Kosaitè-Cypienè and Others v Lithuania [2019]).

These cases all assert that a woman has a legal right to have a home birth if she chooses. They rely on an interpretation of Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights which states that

‘1. Everyone has the right to respect for his private and family life, his home and his correspondence.