UN report used to claim that U.S. Abortion laws violate international human rights

By Timothy Herrmann | October 31, 2011

In response to Special Rapporteur Anand Grover’s recent report on the right to health (previously covered here), many are now charging that US abortion laws exist in violation of international human rights.

According to one pundit, “While in the United States we may treat abortion restrictions as a political issue, elsewhere around the world, advocates and experts understand such restrictions to be public health and human rights issues. And in the United States this year, we have seen law after law passed that clearly violates international human rights standards.”

Another blogger makes similar claims here.

Their argument, like that of Anand Grover, is quite simple: since abortion must be understood under the human right to “health”, no state can regulate or criminalize that right.

It is difficult to interpret this kind of rhetoric as anything less than a direct assault on the sovereign authority of states and society to regulate matters of significant moral concern. By purposefully addressing “access to abortion” within the “right to health” and thus labeling abortion as a human rights issue, UN officials like Grover are doing their best to place the abortion debate off limits to states and societies that wish to affirm and shape the moral fabric of their societies.

There is no consensus on abortion as a “human right” in international law. Abortion is also much more than simply a “health” issue. To claim otherwise is at best ignorant and at worst dishonest. Abortion is a polemic issue internationally precisely because it has serious moral implications in every country. This latest push to make abortion into a human right attempts to forcefully define abortion outside of its current reality and effectively silence states on an extremely important issue.

The moral of the story seems to be as follows: If you can’t win a fight at the UN, you can always do your best to redefine the rules in your favor and pretend as if the fight never existed at all.

Share on Facebook
Share on Twitter