{"id":202025,"date":"2019-05-14T14:22:38","date_gmt":"2019-05-14T19:22:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.liveaction.org\/news\/?p=202025"},"modified":"2019-05-14T11:31:21","modified_gmt":"2019-05-14T16:31:21","slug":"united-nations-attack-us-pro-life-laws","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/united-nations-attack-us-pro-life-laws\/","title":{"rendered":"United Nations Human Rights Committee attacks U.S. pro-life laws"},"content":{"rendered":"
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(Population Research Institute<\/a>) The U.N. Human Rights Committee has taken broad aim at pro-life laws and policies in the United States.\u00a0Meeting last month, the Committee called<\/a> on the Trump administration to \u201creview\u201d a number of its pro-life policies, suggesting that these were incompatible with international law. The Committee singled out for criticism President Trump\u2019s Mexico City Policy,[1]<\/sup><\/a> his executive order \u201cProtecting Free Speech and Religious Liberty,\u201d and his executive order which protects religious employers like the Little Sisters of the Poor from being forced against their religious beliefs to pay for contraceptives in their employer-sponsored health plans.<\/p>\n

Specifically, the Committee called for the Trump administration to explain the \u201ccompatibility\u201d of these pro-life policies with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), suggesting that the U.S. is bound by its own Constitution and by international law to observe the Committee\u2019s interpretation of this international human rights treaty as legitimating abortion.<\/p>\n

What is driving this new assault on American efforts to protect the unborn is the Committee\u2019s General Comment no. 36\u2014a document adopted<\/a> late last year by the Human Rights Committee that claims<\/a> that every country that has ratified the treaty \u201cmust provide\u2026legal and effective access to abortion\u201d in cases of rape, incest, health of the mother, and when the pregnancy \u201cis not viable.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Committee has ordered<\/a> the Trump administration to respond to its inquiry \u201cin the light of the Committee\u2019s General Comment No. 36.\u201d What the Committee did not say was that General Comment No. 36 is the very first<\/a> document ever adopted by a U.N. treaty body to suggest that the ICCPR treaty, or any other U.N. treaty, requires countries to legalize abortion. Nor did it mention that its radical interpretation of the treaty has been rejected by a number of countries.<\/p>\n