Commenting on the General Comment<\/strong><\/p>\nBefore finalizing the General Comment, the Human Rights Committee welcomes comments from a variety of sources. As such, we submitted comments on October 5 arguing three main points.<\/p>\n
First, we argued that the Human Rights Committee needs to acknowledge the right to life for pre-born children in this General Comment. Arguing that life begins at conception and that human rights are inherent in all human beings regardless of age or size, we pointed out that this is already recognized in the Covenant. This right to life of vulnerable persons needs legal protection.<\/p>\n
Secondly, we argued that a correct legal interpretation of the Covenant is consistent with a recognition of the right to life for the pre-born and is inconsistent with a right to abortion. The Human Rights Committee uses vague language creating a broad requirement for governments to provide access to abortion. This interpretation is not grounded in the Covenant nor in international law generally.<\/p>\n
Thirdly, we argued the Human Rights Committee was not honouring governments\u2019 ability to regulate abortion independently. There are countries that restrict access to abortion because they respect the right to life of the pre-born. The inviolable nature of the right to life is a foundational moral question \u2013 one that has been and continues to be foundational for the UN itself. The Human Rights Committee does not have the authority to compel governments to ignore the right to life of the pre-born.<\/p>\n
Many others also wrote to the Human Rights Committee in defense of the right to life of the pre-born. It is our hope that the Committee will read these submissions and be persuaded to edit the proposed General Comment in such a way that maintains the recognition of the right to life of the pre-born.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Thank you to Tabitha Ewert, articling student with ARPA Canada, for this guest post.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This past summer, the United Nations Human Rights Committee released a draft of a General Comment that, if accepted, would amend the current explanation of the \u201cright to life\u201d.\u00a0This amendment would ignore the UN\u2019s current recognition of the rights of pre-born children, essentially declaring a right to abortion. The Human Rights Committee has been steadily […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3014,"featured_media":2352,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[284,277,282,280],"tags":[665,234,719,717,716,718],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.weneedalaw.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2351"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.weneedalaw.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.weneedalaw.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.weneedalaw.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3014"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.weneedalaw.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2351"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/test.weneedalaw.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2351\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2354,"href":"https:\/\/test.weneedalaw.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2351\/revisions\/2354"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.weneedalaw.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2352"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.weneedalaw.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2351"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.weneedalaw.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2351"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.weneedalaw.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2351"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}