Pro-Lifers Barrage UN Committee in Protest
by Stefano Gennarini JD, C-Fam:
The United States, Poland, and more than one hundred other governments and non-governmental organizations barraged the UN Human Rights Committee with briefs, pleading them not to declare abortion a human right.
A bicameral and bipartisan coalition of 51 members of the U.S. Congress, led by Chris Smith of New Jersey, also wrote to the committee, “As lawmakers, we believe we have a duty to protect the weak, disenfranchised, unwanted and vulnerable from violence and abuse. Therefore we write to affirm that the most elemental human right of all—the right to life—includes unborn children.”
Poland’s government wrote: “Article 6 (1) protects the life of every human being in every stage of its development, as the inherent dignity of a human person starts with the very first moment of its existence.”
The UN committee is finalizing a legal commentary that excludes unborn children and the terminally ill from the right to life in article 6 of the UN treaty on civil and political rights, one of the earliest and most widely ratified UN treaties. The commentary will not be binding but could be influential.
While the official statement of the U.S. did not address euthanasia, and did not rule out the possibility of a human right to abortion under other UN treaties that had not been ratified by the United States, it wrote that “any issues concerning access to abortion […] are outside the scope of Article 6.” The U.S. described the draft commentary as “expansive” and “inconsistent with a proper interpretive analysis.”
The governments of Australia, Egypt, Malta, and the Russian Federation also opposed the imposition of a right to abortion. Pro-life organizations and academics from around the world echoed these views in briefs published on the website of the committee.
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