UN continues to push abortion.

New York -- The United Nations is at it again. In July 2000, the UN Human Rights Committee (UNHRC) expressed concern over Ireland's "restrictive" abortion legislation, and in July 2001 the committee urged Guatemala to loosen its abortion law. In March 2004, the committee told Colombia that denying abortion in rape cases was an "outrage." In our April 2004 issue (p.28), Catholic Insight reported that this notorious UN committee, with Canada predictably playing a prominent role, was aggressively pushing a resolution to amend the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights to ban discrimination based on sexual orientation. Fortunately, pressure from the Islamic Conference and its allies forced the UNHRC to postpone its vote. Then, in early November 2004, the same committee urged overwhelmingly-Muslim Morocco to decriminalize abortion.

Now the UN is meddling in the internal pro-life, pro-family affairs of Poland, Malta, and Costa Rica, three overwhelmingly Catholic nations. They are being told (i.e. lied to) that abortion is a human right according to international law. In fact, nowhere is this preposterous claim written in law.

Poland -- The UNHRC, having concluded a review of Poland's compliance with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), is demanding that Poland liberalize its abortion law and implement sex-ed, contraception, and gay rights programs (lifesitenews.com). The report says that Poland's Ministry of Education "should ensure that schools include accurate and objective sexual education in their curricula" and, lest the question of homosexuality be overlooked, the report claims that "discriminatory acts and attitudes against persons on the ground of sexual orientation are not adequately investigated and punished."

The UN report has been released just as the Polish government prepares to consider draft legislation that would loosen current restrictions on abortion. Catholic bishops and pro-lifers in general in Poland are afraid that the report will influence the government's deliberations in a negative manner, while pro-abortion groups funded by the International Planned Parenthood Federation are releasing grossly inflated figures on the supposed number of annual illegal abortions, in order to advocate for "safe", legal abortions.

Malta -- In Malta it is a different agency which is applying pressure, namely the UN Committee on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights. It wants Catholic Malta to legalize abortion in certain circumstances. The Catholic bishops, on the other hand, are urging the Maltese to remain steadfast in their appreciation and defence of human life from conception onwards and refuse all exceptions.

Costa Rica -- In the year 2000, Costa Rica's Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court issued its landmark pro-life ruling that "the human embryo is a person from the moment of conception, ... not an object." Now enters the Center for Reproductive Rights (CRR), the most active pro-abortion litigant in the U.S., and a major global pro-abortion force. It is a U.N.-funded group which now attacks Costa Rica for banning in-vitro fertilization. The CRR is attacking the tiny nation before an international human rights commission, arguing that "the right to life is relative and ... it is subject to limitations when it is opposed to the protection of other fundamental rights."

Note: Catholics should ask the Bishops' Conference to send public statements of solidarity to these countries: they should write to External Affairs Minister Pierre Pettigrew, to stop supporting these efforts; and send copies of their letters to their local MP, and newspapers.