Rebecca Oas
(ZENIT News – Center for Family and Human Rights / Washington, 12.20.2024).- Amnesty International and a group of other pro-abortion organizations say abortionists deserve special protection as “human rights defenders,” despite the fact that there is no international human right to abortion.
The report was written by the leading global abortion providers MSI Reproductive Choices and the International Planned Parenthood Federation, the International Confederation of Midwives, and a handful of other groups whose sole focus is promoting and providing abortion internationally.
Amnesty defines “human rights defenders” as “all those who, individually or in association with others, act to defend human rights.” They say, according to the “UN Declaration on Human Rights Defenders,” such people have the right to support, protection, and an enabling environment to go about their “legitimate activities defending human rights.”
The full title of that declaration is the “UN Declaration on the Right and Responsibility of Individuals, Groups and Organs of Society to Promote and Protect Universally Recognized Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms.” The full title clearly states that it pertains to rights that are “universally recognized.” Issues like abortion, which are highly contested and have been repeatedly rejected as rights that would not meet that standard.
Nevertheless, abortion advocates insist they are human rights defenders. This circular logic has been taken up by some entities within the human rights system. The UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights released a video series in 2015 highlighting a notorious U.S. abortionists as a “human rights defender.”
To support its claim that abortion is a human right, Amnesty relies on the work of UN treaty monitoring bodies and independent experts who issue nonbinding opinions. They frequently cite each other in interpreting a right to abortion in the text of treaties that make no mention of abortion and would never have been adopted if they did.
Amnesty and its coauthoring groups go on to issue a series of demands to national governments to protect and support abortionists and abortion activists. These include “safe access zones” around abortion clinics and providing “safe spaces” and psycho-social support for abortion providers to help them “process stigma, and to help prevent burn-out.” They also call on social media platforms to defend abortion providers from “online harassment,” opening the door to censorship of pro-life opinions and speech.
The report calls on governments to ensure compliance with the World Health Organization’s radical abortion guideline and ensure mandatory abortion training within healthcare and clinical training, including “values clarification” designed to break down employees’ moral and ethical objections to complicity in abortion. Conscientious objection should be strictly regulated, they argue, so that it does not interfere with the provision of abortion.
Governments are also ordered to “promote and affirm the legitimacy of abortion rights defenders” through public awareness-raising campaigns. They add that “values clarification” should also be considered as part of professional development for law enforcement and legal justice workers.
The report also includes a nod to transgender ideology: “while these human rights defenders remain under threat, the abortion rights of women, girls and everyone who can become pregnant are adversely impacted.”
Like the human rights experts whose work Amnesty relies on for support, the opinions of Amnesty and its allies are entirely nonbinding and have no power to create new human rights.
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