UN Child Rights Committee Promotes Abortion, Undermines Parental Rights in New General Comment

By Rebecca Oas, Ph.D.

WASHINGTON D.C., August 1 (C-Fam) The UN human rights committee focused on protecting children’s rights continues to double down in favor of abortion for minors and against parental rights in its forthcoming general comment focused on children’s access to justice.  The government of Argentina has spoken out strongly against it.

The Committee on the Rights of the Child is the treaty body monitoring countries’ compliance with the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which is the UN human rights treaty ratified by the most nations—only the United States has not ratified it.  The committee’s general comments indicate how it will interpret the various articles of the treaty in its dialogues with member states.

The new draft comment specifically mentions the lack of “access to safe abortion services for adolescent girls” as a matter that would require “an effective remedy for a child rights violation” where “time is of the essence.”

Argentina issued strong critical remarks, saying that “the draft requires substantial structural revisions.”  Specifically, Argentina pointed to its use of “gender” rather than “sex” in several paragraphs and argues that the reference to abortion violates both national sovereignty and parental rights.  Also, the draft confuses access to justice, a procedural guarantee, with “a holistic fulfillment of rights.”

Argentina suggests the entire article may be duplicative, as “has already been addressed in nearly half of the Committee on the Rights of the Child’s general comments, including two dedicated ones.”  In summary, “[i]n its current form, it exceeds the Committee’s mandate under the Convention and the UN Charter, violating the principle of good faith in treaty interpretation.”

The Committee on the Rights of the Child’s overreach, particularly on the issue of abortion, has been ongoing for decades.  It began urging countries to liberalize their abortion laws in the late 1990s.  In 2003, the committee issued a general comment on adolescent health urging countries to provide access to “safe abortion services” where it was not against the law.  In 2013, the committee issued another general comment on adolescent health.  This time, they abandoned all deference to national abortion laws and advised against requiring parental permission when accessing “safe abortion.”

In 2016, the committee published a general comment on child rights during adolescence calling for decriminalization of abortion and ensuring access for pregnant adolescents.

Most egregiously, in 2014, the committee ordered the Holy See, which had ratified the treaty, to change its teachings on abortion and homosexuality, prompting a strong response by Vatican officials.

Like the other core UN human rights treaties, the Convention on the Rights of the Child contains no mention of abortion, and in fact, contains some of the most pro-life language in any UN treaty.  In its preamble, the treaty states that children should be protected before and after birth.

Some civil society organizations also raised concerns about the committee’s planned general comment.  The Ordo Iuris Institute for Legal Culture raised concerns that the use of “gender” terminology in the context of children’s access to justice could give rise to situations like one in Canada where a father was imprisoned for opposing his minor daughter receiving testosterone as part of her “gender transition.”  They argued that such cases do “not provide access to the justice of the child, but rather an irreversible damage on a subject not yet mature.”

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