The San Jose Articles
Received today from Austin Ruse, Catholic and Family Rights Institute:
PRESS ADVISORY
October 5, 2011
UN Officials Wrong. No Right to Abortion.
New Expert Document Issued at United Nations
Where: UN Press Briefing Room, Dag Hammarskjold Auditorium
When: October 6, 2011, 11 a.m.
What: Launch of the San Jose Articles
OPEN TO UN ACCREDITED PRESS
Tomorrow morning at the UN press briefing room, internationally recognized scholar Professor Robert George of Princeton and former US Ambassador Grover Joseph Rees will challenge claims made by UN personnel and others that there exists an international right to abortion in international law.
As recently as a few weeks ago the UN Special Rapporteur on Health, the High Commissioner for Human Rights and the UN Secretary General have all said such a right exists. And, according to Human Rights Watch the CEDAW Committee has directed 93 countries to change their laws on abortion.
Professor George, Ambassador Rees and 30 other international experts are releasing the San Jose Articles to refute these claims and to assert the rights of the unborn child in international law.
Other signatories to the Articles include Professor John Finnis of Oxford, Professor John Haldane of the University of St. Andrews, Francisco Tatad, the former majority leader of the Philippine Senate, Javier Borrego, former Judge of the European Court of Human Rights, and Professor Carter Snead of UNESCOs international committee on bioethics.
The San Jose Articles were drafted by a large group of experts in law, medicine, and public policy. The Articles will support and assist those around the world who are coming under pressure from UN personnel and others who say falsely that governments are required by international law to repeal domestic laws protecting human beings in the embryonic and fetal stages of development against the violence of abortion said Professor George.
Ambassador Grover Joseph Rees, former US Ambassador to East Timor, said, When I was in Timor I witnessed first-hand a sustained effort by some international civil servants and representatives of foreign NGOs to bully a small developing country into repealing its pro-life laws. The problem is that people on the ground, even government officials, have little with which to refute the extravagant claim that abortion is an internationally recognized human right. The San Jose Articles are intended to help them fight back.
To schedule an interview with Dr. George, Ambassador Rees or any of the San Jose Signatories, contact Austin Ruse, 202-393-7002, 202-531-3770 (cell).
The Articles and support material may be viewed tomorrow at www.sanjosearticles.org
– from Catholic and Family Rights Institute
The San Jose Articles:
The San JoseArticles:
Article 1. As a matter of scientific fact a new human life begins at conception.
Article 2. Each human life is a continuum that begins at conception and advances in stages until death. Science gives different names to these stages, including zygote, blastocyst, embryo, fetus, infant, child, adolescent and adult. This does not change the scientific consensus that at all points of development each individual is a living member of the human species.
Article 3. From conception each unborn child is by nature a human being.
Article 4. All human beings, as members of the human family, are entitled to recognition of their inherent dignity and to protection of their inalienable human rights. This is recognized in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and other international instruments.
Article 5. There exists no right to abortion under international law, either by way of treaty obligation or under customary international law. No United Nations treaty can accurately be cited as establishing or recognizing a right to abortion.
Article 6. The Committee on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW Committee) and other treaty monitoring bodies have directed governments to change their laws on abortion. These bodies have explicitly or implicitly interpreted the treaties to which they are subject as including a right to abortion.
Treaty monitoring bodies have no authority, either under the treaties that created them or under general international law, to interpret these treaties in ways that create new state obligations or that alter the substance of the treaties.
Accordingly, any such body that interprets a treaty to include a right to abortion acts beyond its authority and contrary to its mandate. Such ultra vires acts do not create any legal obligations for states parties to the treaty, nor should states accept them as contributing to the formation of new customary international law.
Article 7. Assertions by international agencies or non-governmental actors that abortion is a human right are false and should be rejected.
There is no international legal obligation to provide access to abortion based on any ground, including but not limited to health, privacy or sexual autonomy, or non-discrimination.
Article 8. Under basic principles of treaty interpretation in international law, consistent with the obligations of good faith and pacta sunt servanda, and in the exercise of their responsibility to defend the lives of their people, states may and should invoke treaty provisions guaranteeing the right to life as encompassing a state responsibility to protect the unborn child from abortion.
Article 9. Governments and members of society should ensure that national laws and policies protect the human right to life from conception. They should also reject and condemn pressure to adopt laws that legalize or depenalize abortion.
Treaty monitoring bodies, United Nations agencies and officers, regional and national courts, and others should desist from implicit or explicit assertions of a right to abortion based upon international law.
When such false assertions are made, or pressures exerted, member states should demand accountability from the United Nations system.
Providers of development aid should not promote or fund abortions. They should not make aid conditional on a recipient’s acceptance of abortion.
International maternal and child health care funding and programs should ensure a healthy outcome of pregnancy for both mother and child and should help mothers welcome new life in all circumstances.
Audio of the Launch of the San Jose Articles
[pro-player width=’530′ height=’28’ type=’sound’]http://downloads.unmultimedia.org/radio/library/ltd/mp3/2011/PCONFSANJOSEARTICLESFL06OCT11AMRM_2011_10_06t12_06_06.mp3?save[/pro-player]
2011-10-06 11:42:10.0
United Nations, Austin Ruse
Video of the Launch of the San Jose Articles:
…More to come soon on the global push for abortion… check again at http://SyteReitz.com/
Syte Reitz grew up in Queens, New York, in a family of Lithuanian immigrants who fled Nazi and Soviet domination during World War II. Her education includes a Ph.D. in Biochemistry, and post-doctoral work at Princeton University. Syte left her job as an Assistant Professor at Oakland University, Michigan, to devote herself to raising her children, and ultimately homeschooled them through the end of high school. She is a member of Madison's Cathedral Parish.
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