In view of what the Court has said when referring to the beginning of the legal existence of persons, this happens at birth. This serves to legally determine when man begins to enjoy his rights under civil law. “The law protects the life of the unborn. The judge therefore takes, at the request of a person or ex officio, the measures he deems appropriate to protect the existence of the unborn child if he considers that he is endangered in any way whatsoever. All this in accordance with the right to life; As the Court states in the above-mentioned judgment on the protection of the unborn child, life and its natural existence are protected, even if it is not legally a person. On the other hand, although its legal existence is not given, the law protects the natural existence of the unborn child, because the fact that it is not a person of civil law does not mean that there is no life in this being formed in the womb. Likewise, he assured that the provisions of the ACHR imply that the State must guarantee people the highest level of protection, and its interpretation must also be in accordance with constitutional canons that recognize the inalienable, inherent and anonymous rights of the human person, not only those that are recognized exhaustively, and independently of any kind of external criteria. arbitrary or capricious, which would allow us to say that some people are human and others are not. According to the lawyer, it was not the intention of the legislator to ignore the existence of a human life before birth, on the contrary, in the case of birth, some inheritance rights were suspended, but not non-existent, he adds. In his speech to the Constitutional Court, the head of the Public Prosecutor`s Office called on the Supreme Court to recognize that every person is a person and that it is up to the State to guarantee his rights from the moment of conception. According to article 90 of the Civil Code, “the legal existence of every person begins at birth, that is, when he is completely separated from his mother”. And according to article 1019 of the same Code, “it must exist naturally at the time of the opening of succession. For Attorney General Ordóñez, the Colombian civil norm that ignores the existence of these creatures that die or perish in the womb before being completely separated from their mother contradicts Articles 1.2 and 4.1 of the American Convention on Human Rights (ACHR), which state that “everyone has the right to respect for his life”. This right, according to the concept, is protected by law and usually “from the moment of conception”.

It follows from the above two rules that legal existence begins at birth; and life, at the time of conception. Prerequisites for being a legally recognized person: One thing is the beginning of the person`s civil existence, and another is the unborn child`s right to life. For this reason, it requested that this article be declared unconstitutional, since human life is equated with the existence of a legal personality, whereas the right to life from conception exists, must be protected by law and it is prohibited to arbitrarily deprive persons of life. In this context, he stressed that the inviolability of life lies above all in the fact that it is the basis of other rights (see: Intentional homicide is not configured in relation to “nasciturus”). Most people consider a fetus in the womb to be a person, but for civil law, the legal existence of people begins at birth. In Colombia, a person is considered a person from the moment he is born alive, not a fetus that has not been separated from its mother. The foregoing is without prejudice to the right granted by the Constitutional Court to the mother to have an abortion for the reasons and under the conditions set out therein, an issue that we do not address in this opinion or on this website. For example, the right to have marital status, to enjoy one`s right to a name, etc.

“From birth, a man is a person, he has legal personality. He has a marital status, an attribute of personality. And if, before that moment, as Article 93 does, the law allows the suspension of the rights that would correspond to him if he had been born, it is for different reasons: moral, just, political, etc. In short, reasons that lead the legislator to dictate norms in accordance with the ideas and customs that correspond to a particular historical moment. For example, the rule in Article 1019, which allows the beneficiary to inherit if the person whose inheritance is affected at his or her final birth, obeys a test of justice. But it is not the simple fact of being born, but of being born alive, in addition to being completely separated from the mother and surviving this separation even for a while, if this requirement is not met, it is assumed that this person never existed.