By Susan Gately - 18 May, 2014
The European Centre for Law and Justice (ECLJ) has called on the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child to question the UK and Canadian governments over the killing of babies who survive abortions in their countries.
In March, the ECLJ made an oral intervention and a written statement before the Human Rights Council of the UN in Geneva, denouncing the practice of late-term abortion and the killing of babies who survive it.
A month later, in an “urgent appeal”, the ECLJ called on the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture to carry out an investigation on children who survive late-term abortion, and on the methods of late-term abortion, especially in the UK and Canada.
In Canada, between 2000 and 2011, 622 babies who survived an abortion were left to die, and in 2005, the UK recorded 66 such cases.
“The ECLJ affirms that cruel methods of late-term abortion constitute torture, especially one known as dilatation and evacuation – the foetus, still alive, is dismembered and pulled out of the womb in pieces. The ECLJ expects the Special Rapporteur to take action,” it said.
Recently the Holy See was brought before the UN Committee against Torture (CAT).
The hearing dealt with child abuse, but during the hearing Committee Member Felice Gaer told the Holy See that the Church’s position on abortion was a “concern” and that “women should have a right to choose.”
Prohibitions on abortion are a form of torture, she said.
In response, Archbishop Silvano Tomasi, Apostolic Nuncio at the United Nations in Geneva, told the committee: “The Holy See condemns the torture of anyone, including those tortured and killed before they are born.”
According to the ECLJ, an NGO with consultative status with the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC ) of the United-Nations, the real agenda behind the statements coming from the UN committees is to “publicly delegitimise the [Catholic] Church as part of their campaign to get abortion declared a right in the post 2015 development agenda currently under negotiation”.
According to the NGO, abortion lobbies “are currently very active as they want access to abortion to be included in the ‘post-2015 development agenda’, under the pretext of improving maternal health worldwide.
This post-2015 agenda, under negotiation at the UN, will determine the priority development goals for decades to come.
It will be supported by billions of dollars, and governments will have to implement it.
“Therefore, the issue at stake is huge.”
In February, the UN Committee, on the Rights of the Child (CRC) urged the Holy-See to review its position on abortion and to amend Canon law in order to allow it.
“This UN Committee pretended that opposing abortion would violate the rights of the child, omitting the fact that the Convention on the Rights of the Child recognises the ‘needs special safeguards and care, including appropriate legal protection, before as well as after birth’,” said the ECLJ statement.
The Holy See answered those accusations by stating that its goal is, indeed, “to prevent children from being tortured or killed before birth, as is stipulated in the Convention”.
In the past decades, especially during the Cairo and Beijing conferences on population, development and women, the Catholic Church lead a coalition of states to defeat measures aimed at making abortion a human right.
“This explains the current operation of destabilisation and attacks against the Catholic Church in the UN: it is aimed at weakening its influence during subsequent negotiations,” the ECLJ statement said.
It added that while there is clear evidence of hundreds of real cases of torture and infanticides in countries such as the UK and Canada, the question is whether the UN Human Rights bodies, such as UN Committees on the Rights of the Child and against Torture will prove themselves competent and independent enough to fulfil their obligations.
“Today, there is an urgent need for them to prove their fairness.”
