NEW YORK, August 10, 2005 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The United Nations General Assembly Committee is currently drafting the first-ever treaty on the rights of persons with disabilities. The latest discussions center around an article of the convention which pro-life UN lobbyists suggest is amazingly yet another instance of the extreme push for abortion ‘rights’ worldwide.
Article 21 calls on nations to provide for the right to “health and rehabilitation” for disabled persons. However, article 21 includes a subsection defining such a right as including “reproductive health services” which according to admitted UN understanding includes abortion. Article 21, subsection ‘a’ states nations shall: “provide persons with disabilities with the same range and standard of health and rehabilitation services as provided other citizens, including sexual and reproductive health services.”
LifeSiteNews.com spoke with pro-life experts attending the convention who note “What is important for everyone to realize is that in no other treaty or convention have the terms ‘reproductive health’, ‘reproductive health services’, ‘sexual and reproductive health services’ ever appeared.” Campaign Life Coalition International Affairs Director, Sam Singson who is at the Convention told LifeSiteNews.com, “Some of these phrases have appeared in non-binding conference outcome documents, but they have never before appeared in an internationally binding, hard instrument of international law. We have been trying to educate delegates this week about the dangers of leaving this language within the Convention text as it could serve to be the basis for asserting new international human rights to abortion.”
Pat Buckley, on behalf of the UK’s Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC), made an intervention into the UN deliberations Monday pointing out to delegates the danger of the language used in the article. However, Committee Chairman, Ambassador Don MacKay of New Zealand, protested Buckley’s intervention saying that it had already been agreed that no one would use the convention text to assert any new fundamental human rights.
Buckley intervened again Tuesday to demonstrate that the language was completely unacceptable since former UN deliberations had explicitly admitted that abortion is part and parcel of “reproductive health services”. Buckley read out a letter from Dr. Brian Scarnecchia, JD, Legal Counsel of the Society of Catholic Social Scientists which concluded that “If the intention of the working group is not to create new rights in international law it should avoid using unprecedented and vaguely defined new rights language.” MacKay again dismissed the concerns.Â
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