Iulia-Elena Cazan
(ZENIT News – Center for Family and Human Rights / New York, 01.23.2024).- International abortion giant Ipas intends to pressure the US to change abortion laws in order to align with UN Human Rights Committee recommendations.
Ipas lobbied the Human Rights Committee in October, asking the committee to accuse the U.S. of violating the human right to abortion. There is no human right to abortion in UN human right documents.
Representatives from Ipas, Obstetricians for Reproductive Justice, Physicians for Human Right, and State Innovation Exchange were all present at a UN Human Rights Committee hearing and, along with other abortion groups, reported on “the human rights violations caused by abortion bans in the U.S.” Subsequently, the committee recommended that the US fully decriminalize abortion.
UN recommendations are not legally binding, yet progressive groups use them as authoritative talking points to implement and expand the abortion agendas.
Ipas said that it is “already making plans with its partner State Innovation Exchange (SiX) to turn the UN committee’s recommendations into state-level laws that will decriminalize abortion.”
Ipas dedicates extensive time and resources to lobbying policymakers to enact pro-abortion legislation. In its year-end summary, Ipas disclosed that its advocacy efforts led to “77 policy changes to expand abortion access in 15 countries.” In 2024, Ipas will begin “working with [US] state legislators to develop and introduce bills that make abortion legal and accessible in accordance with the WHO guideline.”
Abortion groups point to UN agencies and independent advisors as “experts” and create the impression that these agents have authority to prescribe domestic legislation. Ipas and other groups rely on Human Rights Committee recommendations to persuade US policymakers that abortion access is a human rights matter and that the U.S. lags behind the rest of the developed world. As a matter of fact, most of European countries have more conservative abortion laws than exist in the U.S. states.
The committee released this pro-abortion recommendation in fulfillment of its mandate to oversee the implementation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. However, the covenant does not mention the right to abortion. Article 6 of the Covenant says “Every human being has the inherent right to life. This right shall be protected by law. No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his life.”
In 2018, Ipas, Center for Reproductive Rights, and Human Rights Watch lobbied the committee for a pro-abortion interpretation of the text and, subsequently, the Committee released a comment saying that it will begin to interpret the right to life conferred in Article 6 in such a way as to allow for, and perhaps even recommend, abortion access.
The comment, while non-binding, was enough for this idea to gain momentum normatively and to allow the committee to start framing pro-life laws as inconsistent with human rights.
Van Kampen Saravia, Senior Legal and Policy Advisor at Ipas, said that Ipas is “here to support state legislators who want to champion abortion access, and we’re able to offer our extensive global experience advocating for abortion law reform at the national, state and local levels…We can and will make the Human Rights Committee’s recommendations matter on the ground.”
Ipas does more than lobby, however. It has been complicit in distributing portable abortion devices for use in refugee tents.
