By John Jalsevac
ANN ARBOR, MICHIGANÂJune 1, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Even as pro-life and pro-family advocates across the world are focusing their energies and resources in the fight against so-called abortion “rights” on the national level, a powerful international effort toÂcircumvent the law-codes of independent, sovereign nations is ongoing. This effort, spearheaded by the worldwide legal academia is seeking with increasing success, in particular, to create international laws enforcing universal access to abortion, and to make the refusal to provide abortion an international crime, punishable by the International Criminal Court (ICC). At least, such is the opinion of Richard Wilkins, professor of law at Brigham Young University.
In Wilkins’ must-read article “International Law and the Right to Life”,Âpublished in the most recent issue of the Ave Maria Law Review, the professor argues that “lawmakers in present-day America—as in other countries around the world—face an unexpected reality: international norms—not national laws—may determine the ultimate legality of their official actions.” Indeed, according to Wilkins the UN is increasingly assuming a position of policymaker, creating new international norms that are being imposed upon nations—and accepted by them—as “hard law” (that is, actually binding legislation, enforceable with all the coercive power of the state.)
“These newly-emerging norms are generally phrased in emotionally appealing human rights rhetoric,” says Wilkins, “the clear meaning of which is obscured by elastic phrases…By means of prose at turns lofty and unintelligible, and often after somewhat incongruously disclaiming lawmaking intent, international policymakers are redefining the legal, social, moral, and ethical value of human life.”
In many cases these norms, contained in the documents produced by UN conferences, are being adopted by democratic nations without ever being ratified by the democratic processes upon which the nations’ legal systems were built in the first place. Wilkins cites instances of this radical and novel abuse of the democratic process carried out by the United States Supreme Court itself, which in the past has invoked UN documents that have never been ratified by Congress, as having authority.
Wilkins recounts his own experiences at UN conferences, detailing his desperate and oftentimes lonely efforts to ensure that language providing for international enforcement of access to abortion is not included in the final documents. Wilkins tells how at the Rome Conference in 1998, NGO’s and legal academics sought to make so-called “forced pregnancy” not only a “war-crime”, but a “crime against humanity.” This over-arching term, explains Wilkins, was “not limited to women who were forced by the state to become pregnant; rather, the phrase included women who were prevented from terminating unplanned and/or unwanted pregnancies.” Through the exhaustive and exhausting efforts of Wilkins and other pro-life lobbyists, the immediate disaster was averted; they successfully reminded many delegations of the fact that “far from constituting a ‘crime against humanity,’ pregnancy is a necessary precondition to the continuation of humanity.” The potent, anti-life language only entered the final document in a highly-sterilized form, defused of its explosive implications.
Since the Rome conference numerous similar efforts to impose universal access to abortion have been made, and generally with ever increasing success. At each of these conferences, according to Wilkins, only “because of consistent pro-life efforts, the final documents generally include language preserving national sovereignty on questions of human fertility and limiting the potentially expansive sweep of any reproductive rights language.”
Wilkins admits, however, that if the current paltry level of pro-life and pro-life advocacy at the UN stays constant, then he is not hopeful about the eventual outcome.
“Despite disappointments, questionable tactics, and the need to resort to double-speak, abortion-rights proponents continue to move ahead, relentlessly. Their academic personnel, resources, and enthusiasm never seem to diminish.” Wilkins contrasts this energy and determination against the world-wide pro-life response, which he calls generally “timid and restrained”. In large part Wilkins puts this response down to the fear which academics have of being stigmatized for pro-life beliefs. But he emphasizes that “pro-life academicians must be willing to act—even when acting is not easy.”
Wilkins concludes with a final exhortation to action, saying “Those who cherish the right to life must forge an international legal system that respects and protects the inalienable rights of all members of the human family. If we succeed, we will have forged results stronger than iron: generations of mothers and fathers, sons and daughters, grandparents and grandchildren, who will reap the blessings of the simple things of life—marriage, motherhood, fatherhood, childhood, and faith—the simple things that make ordinary life pleasant and possible. No task on this grand and great earth is more important.”
Read the full article on the Ave Maria Law Review website:
https://www.avemarialaw.edu/publications/lawReview/articles/v4i1.wilkins.finallayout.0318.pdf