N Human Rights Office to Litigate LGBT and Abortion in Latin America
by Stefano Gennarini JD, C-Fam:
The UN human rights office has launched a new initiative to promote judicial activism on gender issues in Central and South America, including abortion and the LGBT agenda.
The UN human rights office established an organization to promote strategic litigation, legal reforms, and legal education on gender issues in Central and South America, regions where laws remain highly protective of children in the womb. While the organization, called the Latin American Network for Gender-based Strategic Litigation, focuses mostly on violence against women, it also promotes abortion as an international right following the recommendations of the UN human rights bodies.
The UN report on which the organization’s work is based describes “access to safe and legal abortion” as a human right and calls on advocates across Latin America to promote the denial of abortion as a criminal act of “reproductive violence.”
“To change laws, judicial practice, and the patriarchal culture that surrounds the investigation and punishment of crimes of sexual and gender based violence remains the central challenge,” said the coordinators of the group and American University professors Susana SáCouto and Claudia Martin in a blog.
The website of the organization promotes the rulings of Latin American courts promoting abortion as models to be followed, including controversial cases that have been dubbed judicial activism, or attempts by judges to impose their policy preferences in disregard of the will of the people as expressed by their elected representatives.
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