Friday, August 11, 2006

New UN Human Rights Treaty Threatens to Include Abortion

From the Friday Fax,

The UN will meet for two weeks starting on Monday on what may be the final negotiating session for an international treaty on disabilities. As per usual, "reproductive health" is a major sticking point in the final draft.

C-FAM personnel, along with allies from around the world, will be present and working to affect the draft document.

Spread the word.

Yours sincerely,
Austin Ruse
President
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New UN Human Rights Treaty Threatens to Include Abortion
By Susan Yoshihara PhD

(NEW YORK - C-FAM) United Nations delegates will assemble in New York on Monday to finalize a new human rights treaty. The International Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities will be “hard” international law, joining other human rights instruments which are binding on the countries that ratify them. Most documents negotiated at the UN are non-binding. Treaties, such as this one, require governments to change their domestic laws based on the treaty.

Conservative legal experts have complained that the draft text contains ambiguous and undefined language – such as “reproductive health,” the right to “experience sexuality,” and the right to “have sexual and other intimate relationships” -- that has never before appeared in a treaty-level document. They note that the current text provides virtually no protection for the disabled from euthanasia due to a perceived diminishment in their quality of life. These experts caution that if delegates do not challenge the current text, there will be no safeguards against the worst outcomes – including the creation of new and enforceable rights such as the right to death and an unrestricted right to abortion.

More at the Friday Fax here.



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