Stefano Gennarini
(ZENIT News – Center for Family and Human Rights / New York, 10.12.2023).- Over 360 pro-life groups have asked the UN General Assembly to block President Joe Biden’s nominee to the International Court of Justice because of her support of abortion.
The groups say, “American law professor Sarah Cleveland tried to impose new human rights that were never contemplated by Sovereign nations, including on abortion and transgender issues,” in a petition at www.stopsarahcleveland.com.
Her decisions as a member of the most powerful court in the world will reach far beyond the International Court of Justice, the petition warns. It explains that “courts and activists all over the world will cite them as binding jurisprudence.”
“Cleveland abused her position as a human rights expert to promote controversial social policies as if they were international human rights, including abortion, homosexual marriage and transgenderism,” the petition reads. This is considered highly controversial because these ideas are not mentioned anywhere in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the treaty she was responsible for monitoring. The petition says that Cleveland promotes the notion that international treaties are “living instruments” and that international experts can create new human rights obligations through non-binding reports.
The pro-life groups also accuse Cleveland of using her positions to “directly pressure” governments to repeal protections for the unborn in their national laws and of attacking countries with pro-family laws and policies “in statements to the press.”
Cleveland has courted controversy on more than one occasion because of her abortion activism.
The groups accuse Cleveland of “viciously” attacking her colleague on the Human Rights Committee, Ambassador Ahmed Amin Fathalla for merely expressing the view that abortion-on-demand is not an international human right. The well-known Egyptian legal expert and diplomat is also a candidate to the International Court of Justice this year.
More recently, Cleveland’s nomination to be the top State Department lawyer was withdrawn over these controversies. Her nomination was scuttled because of concerns over her judicial activism on abortion as a member of the UN Human Rights Committee and her globalist views about international law. Cleveland argues that U.S. Presidents should use executive orders to implement and support treaties that have not been approved for ratification by the U.S. Senate, including the International Criminal Court and several human rights treaties.
Cleveland, a law professor at Columbia University, is one of the architects of the U.S. government’s approach to human rights over the last thirty years. She held several advisory positions in the U.S. State Department before becoming a member of the UN Human Rights Committee. In a paper published shortly before her nomination to the International Court of Justice, titled “A Human Rights Agenda for the Biden Administration”, Cleveland outlined many of the policies of the current U.S. administration, including paying for abortions through U.S. taxpayer funds, denying conscience rights for health providers who object to performing abortions, requiring health insurance companies to pay for transgender drugs and surgeries. All this, Cleveland argues in her paper, must be done in the name of protecting human rights.
The elections of the new members of the International Court of Justice are expected to take place on November 9 concurrently in the General Assembly and the Security Council, by secret ballot.
