Dear Prolife Colleague, We try to keep you current on world scene abortion info. Our Sept 23 email letter to you detailed a report by the U.N. Human Rights Council which declares elective abortion to be a fundamental human right, linked to the “right to the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health.” There are persistent attempts to pressure nations with prolife laws to change these laws to make abortion universally available. Finally, we have some pressure in the other direction: the San Jose Articles. This is a crucial initiative. The San Jose Articles were drafted by a large group of experts in law, medicine, and public policy. The Articles will support and assist those around the world who are coming under pressure from UN personnel and others who say falsely that governments are required by international law to repeal domestic laws protecting human beings in the embryonic and fetal stages of development against the violence of abortion. Be informed. Read about it at: www.sanjosearticles.org
Why the San Jose Articles?
It is now commonplace that people around the world are told there is a new international right to abortion. Those who receive this message are people who have the power to change abortion laws; parliamentarians, lawyers, judges and others. Those delivering this message are influential and believable people; UN personnel, human rights lawyers, judges and others. The assertion they make is false. No UN treaty makes abortion an international human right. Even so, the assertion is gaining traction around the world. The high court of Colombia changed their country’s abortion laws based on this false assertion. More are considering such a change. The purpose of the San Jose Articles is to provide expert testimony that no such right exists. The San Jose Articles were prepared an a group of 31 experts in international law, international relations, international organizations, public health, science/medicine and government. The signers include law professors, philosophers, Parliamentarians, Ambassadors, human rights lawyers, and delegates to the UN General Assembly. The purpose of the San Jose Articles is also to demonstrate that the unborn child is already protected in human rights instruments and that governments should begin protecting the unborn child by using international law. We hope that experts around the world will place a copy of the San Jose Articles on their desks and that the next time they hear this false assertion they share this expert testimony. It is also our hope that the San Jose Articles will begin to appear in law review articles, in Parliamentary resolutions and in the debate of the UN General Assembly. Finally, it is our fervent hope that governments will begin to utilize their right to refer to existing international law to protect the unborn child from abortion. Those who make the false assertion that there is new international right to abortion have had the microphone too long. The San Jose Articles take that microphone away.
San Jose Articles
Article 1. As a matter of scientific fact a new human life begins at conception. Article 2. Each human life is a continuum that begins at conception and advances in stages until death. Science gives different names to these stages, including zygote, blastocyst, embryo, fetus, infant, child, adolescent and adult. This does not change the scientific consensus that at all points of development each individual is a living member of the human species. Article 3. From conception each unborn child is by nature a human being. Article 4. All human beings, as members of the human family, are entitled to recognition of their inherent dignity and to protection of their inalienable human rights. This is recognized in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and other international instruments. Article 5. There exists no right to abortion under international law, either by way of treaty obligation or under customary international law. No United Nations treaty can accurately be cited as establishing or recognizing a right to abortion. Article 6. The Committee on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW Committee) and other treaty monitoring bodies have directed governments to change their laws on abortion. These bodies have explicitly or implicitly interpreted the treaties to which they are subject as including a right to abortion. 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. Accordingly, any such body that interprets a treaty to include a right to abortion acts beyond its authority and contrary to its mandate. Such ultra vires acts do not create any legal obligations for states parties to the treaty, nor should states accept them as contributing to the formation of new customary international law. Article 7. Assertions by international agencies or non-governmental actors that abortion is a human right are false and should be rejected. There is no international legal obligation to provide access to abortion based on any ground, including but not limited to health, privacy or sexual autonomy, or non-discrimination. Article 8. Under basic principles of treaty interpretation in international law, consistent with the obligations of good faith and pacta sunt servanda, and in the exercise of their responsibility to defend the lives of their people, states may and should invoke treaty provisions guaranteeing the right to life as encompassing a state responsibility to protect the unborn child from abortion. Article 9. 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. Treaty monitoring bodies, United Nations agencies and officers, regional and national courts, and others should desist from implicit or explicit assertions of a right to abortion based upon international law. When such false assertions are made, or pressures exerted, member states should demand accountability from the United Nations system. Providers of development aid should not promote or fund abortions. They should not make aid conditional on a recipient’s acceptance of abortion. International maternal and child health care funding and programs should ensure a healthy outcome of pregnancy for both mother and child and should help mothers welcome new life in all circumstances. We — human rights lawyers and advocates, scholars, elected officials, diplomats, and medical and international policy experts — hereby affirm these Articles. San Jose, Costa Rica March 25, 2011