Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies Endorse Special Rapporteur on Right to Abortion

By Stefano Gennarini, J.D. | December 1, 2011

Just in case anyone was wondering who actually pays attention to anything that goes on within the UN Human Rights machinery…

The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRCRC) and the Partnership for Maternal, Newborn & Child Health have just issued a report on maternal and child health.

In the report they endorse the vision of the right to health proposed by the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Health, reported on in the Friday Fax a month ago. In this vision, any restriction on abortion is a violation of human rights. Not only does the report embrace that vision, but it calls on countries to pay heed to the Special Rapporteur. The section of the report titled “Human rights is the framework
to eliminate health inequities” cites the Special Rapporteur’s opinion and calls on countries to change their laws, at page 23:

“[a]ll states must provide safe abortion and contraception for women. ‘States must take measures to ensure that legal and safe abortion services are available, accessible, and of good quality.’ But the real challenge is to find out how many states will indeed change their policies accordingly [that is, with the Special Rapporteur’s opinion].”

The report also refers to General Comment 14 of the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, a body that monitors the International Convention on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. It states that countries cannot “limit access to health goods, including those related to reproductive and sexual health” and that “states must take measures to ensure that third parties do not interfere with the right to health, for example, by requiring spousal or parental permission to access health services.”

The IFRCRC have said in the past that they are not involved with abortion, even though they have been involved in providing contraception for many years. The report suggests that they are moving in another direction, even though no official change of position has been made public. They may be following the lead of Amnesty International, another influential organization that became pro-abortion in 2007 amid much controversy. No controversy thus far has emerged from the IFRCRC report.

The Partnership and the IFRCRC are not the first to commend the work of the Special Rapporteur. They join the advocacy group, the Center for Reproductive Rights.

This goes to show how Special Procedures, treaty monitoring bodies and other unaccountable elements within the Human Rights machinery of the United Nations are able to influence policy, if not law, without the authority to do so. The Friday Fax this week speaks of this.

These elements are flooding the UN system with documents that fabricate a right to abortion out of references to family planning, maternal health, equality, and other terms contained in international treaties. No international treaty mentions abortion, nor may be fairly interpreted to imply there is a right to abortion. While these documents are not able to create new legal obligations on states, they are so numerous and so persistent that they end up shaping the way international programs like the WHO and the IFRCRC carry out their work.

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