Secret Memos Reveal Worldwide Pro-Abortion Legal Strategy
CFAM Friday Fax, 5, December, 2003.
Vol. 6, No. 50
(Reproduced with permission)
The Friday Fax has acquired a number of internal memos produced by
the Center for Reproductive Rights (CRR) that map out CRR's multi-year
strategy for establishing binding and enforceable international reproductive
rights laws, most notably girls' and women's right to state-financed
abortion on demand. The memos were written to summarize the conclusions of
strategic planning meetings held by CRR in late October, and they explain in
detail how the Center, along with its many pro-abortion allies throughout
the world, plans to expand international laws well beyond their current
scope and to impose these new laws worldwide, even upon individual nations
that do not explicitly assent to the changes.
The memos appear to confirm long-standing fears of some legal
scholars that international negotiations on human rights laws are no longer
conducted in good faith, and that national sovereignty is jeopardized by
such negotiations.
In the memos, CRR repeatedly states that its "overarching goal is to
ensure that governments worldwide guarantee reproductive rights out of
an understanding that they are bound to do so." These rights would include
the broadest possible access to abortion, and the establishment of
abortion as an internationally recognized human right, but they are not
limited to abortion. CRR also speaks of the international community's need
to recognize the "inalienable nature" of what it calls "sexual rights."
These rights will in turn require new laws that "explicitly address the
legal and social subordination women face within their families, marriages,
communities and societies." They will also require the establishment of
"reproductive autonomy" for girls, which CRR describes as access to all
reproductive information and services, including abortion, without parental
notification or consent.
CRR hopes to achieve these goals through a multi-pronged strategy.
First, CRR will work to radically expand the interpretations of
already-accepted international rights, what CRR calls "hard norms," into
vehicles for its reproductive rights agenda. Thus, CRR claims to have found,
or "grounded," a right to abortion in the right to life, the right to
health, even the right to enjoy scientific progress. CRR favors this
approach because "there is a stealth quality to the work: we are achieving
incremental recognition of values without a huge amount of scrutiny from the
opposition."
Second, CRR hopes to create new customary international laws, what
it calls "soft norms," that explicitly mention abortion and sexual
autonomy. According to CRR, if soft norms are repeated often enough, they
may become hard norms, and therefore binding on nations. Soft norms
accumulate in a host of international and regional settings, including
through the European Court of Human Rights and UN compliance committees.
Finally, CRR seeks a means to impose these new international laws on
recalcitrant nations. Thus, CRR will be "supporting efforts to
strengthen existing enforcement mechanisms, such as the campaign for the
International Criminal Court and the Optional Protocol to the Convention on
the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women."
The Friday Fax is reported and written by Douglas Sylva, C-FAM Vice
President.
Copyright - C-FAM (Catholic Family & Human Rights Institute). Permission
granted for unlimited use. Credit required.
Catholic Family & Human Rights Institute
866 United Nations Plaza, Suite 427
New York, New York 10017
Phone: (212) 754-5948 Fax: (212) 754-9291
E-mail: c-fam@c-fam.org Website:
www.c-fam.org