Politics
Monday June 27, 2005
UN Group Sues Colombia to Decriminalize Abortion
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BAGOTA, Columbia, June 27, 2005 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Despite the repeated failure of attempts by the UN to pressure Colombia into decriminalizing abortion, the UN funded Women’s Link Worldwide (WLW) is suing Colombia into permitting abortion in so-called ‘extreme cases’. WLW is funded by the notoriously pro-abortion United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA).
This recent case is merely the latest in a series of attempts by the UN and UN-funded Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) to impose their idea of “reproductive” and “women rights” on Colombia. In 1999 the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against women (CEDAW) demanded that Colombia legalize abortion. And in 2004 pro-life UN lobbyist Samantha Singson reported that the representatives from Colombia were repeatedly hounded during a meeting of the United Nations Human Rights Committee to step into line with the official UN agenda and decriminalize abortion.
Besides the obvious fact that murder, including abortion, can never legitimately be permitted under any code of law, Colombians are more than aware that decriminalizing abortion for the sake of the so-called ‘extreme cases’ would be to include the ambiguous ‘health of the mother’. This is a vague and widely interpretable phrase which includes such ambiguities as ‘psychological anguish’, and which, if adopted, would effectively legalize abortion.
Despite the constant pressure from the UN, this year the Colombian Congress amended the penal code to further extend the maximum sentence for abortions from three years to four and a half.
“Instead of amending its laws to comply with International human rights obligations, the Colombian authorities have only imposed harsher punishments on women for exercising their human rights,” fumed ‘women’s rights’ researcher at Human Rights Watch, Marianne Molmann. “The court has an obligation to reverse this anti-constitutional development.”
Colombia remains one of the few nations in Latin America which continues to constitutionally affirm that human life begins at conception and that the right to life is the basis for all other rights protected by the constitution. Chile and El Salvador also continue to prohibit abortion in all cases.
Contradicting the false claim of the WLW website that abortion is okay with the Catholic Church, bishops in the predominantly Catholic nation announced in 2001 that they would excommunicate medical practitioners and judges who participate in procuring abortions.
"Nothing and no one can authorize the death of a human person, and certainly not when the person is helpless and unprotected," said Cardinal Pedro Rubiano Saenz, the president of the Colombian bishops' conference.
Related Coverage:
Read the Spanish Language Human Rights Watch brief:
http://hrw.org/spanish/informes/2005/amicus0505/
United Nations Tells Colombia Denying Abortion in Rape Cases is an 'Outrage'
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2004/mar/04031701.html
Columbia’s RC Bishops to Excommunicate Abortion Co-operators
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2001/jul/01071901.html
JJ
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