Friday July 30, 2010
Brazilian Government Joins UN to Urge Latin American Nations to Depenalize Abortion
By Matthew Cullinan Hoffman, Latin America Correspondent
BRASILIA, July 29, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The Brazilian government has signed a UN-sponsored document endorsing the depenalization of abortion throughout Latin America.
The legally non-binding document, entitled the “Brasilia Consensus,” was issued by the Eleventh Regional Conference on Latin American and Caribbean Women (CEPAL) meeting in Brazil’s capital city. It contains numerous references, some oblique and others explicit, to measures in favor of abortion, homosexualism, contraception, and other anti-life and anti-family policies.
In its section on “sexual and reproductive rights,” a term often used as a euphemism for the legalization of abortion, the “Consensus” calls on governments to “review laws that punish women who have undergone abortions,” and cites the Committee against Torture of the United Nations, implying that prohibiting abortion is equal to “torture” under international law.
The same section, also demands that governments “guarantee the conditions and resources for the protection and exercise of women’s sexual and reproductive rights throughout the lifecycle and across population groups, free of all forms of discrimination,” and to “ensure also universal access by women in their diversity to comprehensive, high-quality sexual and reproductive health care.”
The Brazilian newspaper O Globo reports that the document, which it characterizes as a call for depenalizing abortion, was endorsed and signed by Brazil’s official representative Nilcéa Freire, the minister of the Special Secretariat of Policies for Women.
The newspaper notes that, following the government’s retreat from depenalizing abortion in its national “human rights” program, “the decriminalization of abortion has been defended again officially by the Brazilian government.”
O Globo additionally reports that three countries refused their signatures to the document: the United States, Chile, and Costa Rica. All of the other governments, 33 in toto, gave their assent.
The “Consensus,” which ironically contradicts the beliefs of a majority of Latin Americans, also contains statements endorsing homosexualism, including a condemnation of “lesbophobia,” and promotes the distribution of contraceptives to adolescents.
The conference was organized by the United Nations’ Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC).
Related LifeSiteNews coverage:
Brazilian President Seeks to Secure Abortion as “Right,” Ban Crucifixes in Government Buildings
https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2010/jan/10012208.html
Brazilian President Luiz Lula Defends Abortion, Gay Unions
https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2008/sep/08091815.html