A Person’s Birth. Past and Present

Abstract

The new wording of article 30 of the Civil Code, where the requirements of having human figure and living twenty-four hours outside the mother’s womb, in order to acquire civil personality where we no longer find the requirements of having human figure and living twenty four hours outside the maternal cavity, impels us to reflect upon the evolution that occurred in the field of the natural person’s legal birth. In order to do so we should not only consider the tradition of Roman Law, which has always proved its influence in the field, but also the following criteria according to the regulation on biomedical investigation taken place in the past few years and which has unquestionably helped us understand the technical precision which we should adopt when defining the human being at the time of birth.