The UN Declares Abortion a Human Right - The American Spectator | USA News and Politics
The UN Declares Abortion a Human Right
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In the name of human rights, the United Nations orders Ireland to repeal the right to life embedded in the Catholic country’s Constitution. Will they next command governments to supply muzzles to silence nonconformists in the name of freedom of speech?

A woman who claims her unborn child suffered from a terminal heart ailment complained to the international body after traveling to Liverpool to obtain an abortion more than halfway through the pregnancy’s term.

“She was subjected to a gender-based stereotype that women should continue their pregnancies regardless of the circumstances, their needs and wishes, because their primary role is to be mothers and self-sacrificing caregivers,” a report released Thursday by the United Nations Human Rights Committee maintains. “Stereotyping her as a reproductive instrument subjected her to discrimination, infringing her right to gender equality.”

The UN report neither explains how a right nowhere found in the Irish Constitution trumps one clearly enumerated nor where foreigners possess the right to dictate the laws of nations in which they do not hold citizenship — let alone elected office. Where is the legal authority here?

Foreseeing such a heavy-handed assault on democracy from its Supreme Court, but not, perhaps, the UN, Irish voters, by a vote of 67 percent to 33 percent, passed a Constitutional amendment in 1983. It now reads: “The State acknowledges the right to life of the unborn and, with due regard to the equal right to life of the mother, guarantees in its laws to respect, and, as far as practicable, by its laws to defend and vindicate that right.”

The UN presumptuously orders Ireland to pay reparations to the woman for denying her an abortion and “bereavement counselling.” It further demands that Ireland change its Constitution. The report dictates that Ireland “should amend its law on voluntary termination of pregnancy, including if necessary its Constitution, to ensure compliance with the Covenant, including ensuring effective, timely and accessible procedures for pregnancy termination in Ireland.”

But most of Ireland’s people respect another covenant, which includes the laws given to Moses by God, more.

People who can’t conceive of life as a basic human right unsurprisingly reject the right to vote. Ireland, a sovereign state, voted. The UN dislikes the choice it made. Why do a handful of unelected UN bureaucrats believe that their policy preferences supersede the decision of a nation now totaling 4.5 million people?

Even one ardently pro-choice can see the folly in denying Ireland choice over its laws. The very basic concept that citizens should hold sway over the laws of their nations transcends pro-life/pro-choice arguments. Though advocates of legalized abortion likely support the ends here, the means grate anyone who believes in the principle of democratic governance. Alas, abortion uber alles, a phrase rarely lost in translation, guides fanatics everywhere.

Around the globe signs of rebellion against globalist intrusions upon national sovereignty abound. Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump dubbing the North Atlantic Treaty Organization “obsolete” and judging it guilty of “ripping off the United States” and the Brexit vote later this month calling for the United Kingdom to leave the European Union represent two of many instances in which substantial numbers of people resent foreign entities holding up the decisions of their democracies for veto or rewrite.

Rather than understand such palpable displeasure as a message to back off, the UN Human Rights Committee further interferes with matters beyond its purview. Their arrogance will cause either their undoing — or ours.

There’s a name for people who cavalierly decree the laws of a country without ever stepping foot there. It’s the same name that fits a grown adult using deadly force against a three-pound baby. The history of Ireland, if nothing else, reads as a history of fighting back against bullies.

Daniel J. Flynn
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Daniel J. Flynn, a senior editor of The American Spectator, is the author of Cult City: Harvey Milk, Jim Jones, and 10 Days That Shook San Francisco (ISI Books, 2018), The War on Football (Regnery, 2013), Blue Collar Intellectuals (ISI Books, 2011), A Conservative History of the American Left (Crown Forum, 2008), Intellectual Morons (Crown Forum, 2004), and Why the Left Hates America (Prima Forum, 2002). His articles have appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, Boston Globe, New York Post, City Journal, National Review, and his own website, www.flynnfiles.com.   
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