United Nations, October 6, 2011
Today, at the Dag Hammarskjold Auditorium at the United Nations, the San Jose Articles were introduced to the world.
Article 5 states “There exists no right to abortion under international law, either by way of treaty obligation or under customary international law.”
In recent months several human rights organizations and non-governmental organizations have claimed an international right to abortion. They cite UN monitoring agencies that have requested countries to change their pro-life laws as proof that the right exists.
It is true that the CEDAW Committee, which provides oversight for the international treaty on women’s rights (the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women), has interpreted some of the international documents to include abortion as a right – but that is an interpretation, NOT a fact. (The U.S. Senate has not ratified this treaty.)
“As a matter of scientific fact a new human life begins at conception,” is the beginning statement of the newly declared San Jose Articles.
As back up to their right-to-life claims, the international treaty on the Rights of the Child states that “the child, by reason of his physical and mental immaturity, needs special safeguards and care, including appropriate legal protection, before as well as after birth.” (The U.S. has not ratified this treaty, because many Senators are concerned to maintain the rights of the parents.)
In the preamble to the Charter of the United Nations it acknowledges the “dignity and worth of the human person.” In my experience at the U.N., delegates who support abortion are usually opposed to acknowledging language which recognizes “dignity and worth” of humans. Their very opposition to this language reveals their acceptance of the dignity and worth of the unborn child.
The San Jose Articles point out that “treaty monitoring bodies have no authority, either under the treaties that created them or under general international law, to interpret these treaties in ways that create new state obligations or that alter the substance of the treaties” (Article 7).
Article 9 concludes: “Governments and members of society should ensure that national laws and policies protect the human right to life from conception. They should also reject and condemn pressure to adopt laws that legalize or depenalize abortion.”
These Articles were introduced at the U.N. by Professor Robert George of Princeton and former US Ambassador Grover Joseph Rees. Other signatories to the Articles include Professor John Finnis of Oxford, Professor John Haldane of the University of St. Andrews, Francisco Tatad, the former majority leader of the Philippine Senate, Javier Borrego, former Judge of the European Court of Human Rights, and Professor Carter Snead of UNESCO’s international committee on bioethics.
