NEW YORK, May 10 (C-FAM) Lawyers and doctors last week denounced the highest human rights court in the Americas for meddling with science and failing to protect human life.
Last December, the Inter-American Court for Human Rights struck down a Costa Rican ban on in-vitro fertilization, known as IVF. In order to rule that way the court had to weigh in on the law and science of when human life begins. It decided the IVF ban infringed the right to privacy, personal autonomy and sexual and reproductive health.
An online declaration prepared by lawyers, doctors, and scientists says the court’s opinion is not a legitimate precedent for future cases involving embryonic life, and should be disregarded because it is legally and scientifically flawed.
The declaration criticizes how the court disregards the right to life. But the declaration’s authors find even more troubling the court’s treatment of medical and scientific matters.
According to the Court, a fertilized ovum only becomes a person at implantation. That ruling contradicts the widely held scientific consensus that a unique individual member of the human species is conceived once an ovum is fertilized.
Signatories of the declaration point out “scientific imprecisions” in the court’s opinion that belittle the humanity of embryos before implantation. Specifically, the court mistakenly describes the nature and quality of embryonic cells and relied on too many non-scientific arguments. It also wrongly assumed that laws protecting embryonic life were passed when conception outside of the womb was unimaginable.
The declaration warns that any endorsement of the court’s opinion in the Costa Rica case could result in illegal trafficking of human embryos as well as the use of embryos without consent from parents.
The Costa Rica case carries special significance because the American Convention for Human Rights, which the court applied, offers the only international protection for human life from the moment of conception. Several treaties presume that national laws protect unborn children before birth and may even require it, but none explicitly protect human life as comprehensively as the American convention.
One expert on the Inter-American human rights system described the case as “the worst decision on the protection of embryonic human life ever issued by an international court.”
Countries subject to the Inter-American court’s jurisdiction, aside from Costa Rica, have yet to cry foul over the decision. Any official response is certain to draw fire from abortion groups. Both moderate supporters of abortion and proponents of abortion on demand deny the right to life of embryos and do not object to drugs with the potential to destroy embryonic life.
At the same time, there is a renewed awareness of the dangers of judicial activism in legal and academic circles across Latin America. This decision represents the kind of action denounced by advocates of judicial restraint as a threat to democracy and the rule of law.
Responses like the declaration should help gather momentum for a concerted pushback against similar actions from the court in the future. The Declaration of Guanajuato is open for signatures.
