Longtime human rights activist Juan Mendez, the UN's special rapporteur on torture, has come out with his yearly report on torture. He makes a pretty stark assertion--not allowing legalized abortion is a form of torture.
International and regional human rights bodies have begun to recognize that abuse and mistreatment of women seeking reproductive health services can cause tremendous and lasting physical and emotional suffering, inflicted on the basis of gender. Examples of such violations include abusive treatment and humiliation in institutional settings; involuntary sterilization; denial of legally available health services
such as abortion and post-abortion care; forced abortions and sterilizations; female genital mutilation; violations of medical secrecy and confidentiality in health-care settings, such as denunciations of women by medical personnel when evidence of illegal abortion is found; and the practice of attempting to obtain confessions as a condition of potentially life-saving medical treatment after abortion.
Mendez then refers to a case before the European Court of Human Rights in which a Polish woman was not allowed to get genetic testing when an ultrasound revealed evidence of a birth defect. Poland, for those who don't know, has some of the toughest restrictions on abortion in the world. Mendez puts it bluntly--"Access
to information about reproductive health is imperative to a woman‟s ability to exercise reproductive autonomy, and the rights to health and to physical integrity."
As you might expect, this report has the anti-abortion crowd up in arms. The leader of a group of pro-life OB/GYNs told Charisma magazine that abortion amounts to an attack on women.
“On International Women’s Day, it is disturbing [that] the United Nations would push such a blatant pro-abortion agenda, especially when the evidence shows that the procedure is never medically necessary to save the life of the mother in any circumstance,” said Dr. Donna J. Harrison, President of the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists. “In fact, abortion is always an act of violence against women. Every time there is an abortion, somebody dies. The U.N. agenda is clear: it is pushing abortion-on-demand that we know hurts women. Women's health is best protected in a culture [of] life. They must be countered.”
Harrison's assertion is laughable. There have been numerous stories where a mother would die if she carried the baby to term.
Stefano Gennarini, the legal studies director at the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute, goes even further--he claims that abortion actually violates international law.
"It certainly has no basis in international law," said Gennarini. "Neither the convention against torture, nor any other UN treaty, speaks about abortion. If anything, there are several UN treaties that have pro-natalist provisions, provisions that say that children should be protected, including the preamble to the convention on the rights of the child, as well as the prohibition for prescribing the death penalty for pregnant women, for example."
Huh? Banning the death penalty for pregnant women makes abortion illegal? What planet is that from?