UN Human Rights Committee oversteps its authority

My hypothesis was completely abstact, and it is impossible now. Perhaps in a far future, but not right now. It was not about cloning per se, as we know it, and I was very specific to put it in quotes, hoping you'd understand. "Cloning" - but meaning literally atom by atom, to completely re-create a human being from original material and a complete "picture" of someone's atoms.

Now that this little digression is over, let's return to the topic.

 

*sigh* Does anyone even remember what that is?

 

Currently we were discussing the nature of crime in the context of state and moral/natural law and the disagreement of law and personal feelings.

Chevalier stated that he does not presume to judge a woman that aborts her baby, but is against legal approval of abortion. Taluntain pointed out that it seemed a double standard to which I replied with the analogy that I'm not judging a person that steals the loaf of bread, but I am against legal approval of theft - both major and minor.
Tal went to comment that it still felt to be double standard to him. I have replied with:

Reply pending.
I would like to add one thing: the fact that one cannot judge a person that steals that loaf of bread does not mean he cannot have his opinion on theft itself. I'm not judging such a person. It would be a personal judgment, not a legal one, thus invalid and dangerous. I am still opposed to larceny (even minor) to be allowed by the law. Is that a double standard? I don't think so.
If minor larceny is illegal, the man who steals the loaf of bread would be jailed, thus unable to feed his family and they would die of starvation.
If minor larceny is legal, the man would not be guilty. However, what's there to stop thieves from doing 'minor' larceny on a massive scale? Steal thousands of loaves and it would be considered legal?

I would like to point out one more thing on the global matter of this thread (the local matter is a definition matter):
If abortion is legalised, it creates social acceptance. Social acceptance in turn increases the number of abortions in the society. It doesn't even need promoting - it would promote itself. Why not promote adoption? What difference does it make to a woman to carry her child for the 5 or 6 months after finding out she's pregnant (despite modern tests available, most women find out they're pregnant in the third or fourth month)? Or 3-4 months? Caesarean birth in 7th or 8th month nowadays gives her child a huge chance of survival.
In Poland, all is very simple. The woman doesn't even have to see her child or know the adoptive parents. After bearing it, she is free to leave the hospital without so much as turning back. Her child will find the adoptive family immediately.
And she won't even have to pay a single dime for that. If she decides to keep the child, she may do so - also without problems.

What is the problem with women wanting to commit abortion after being raped? Especially after the mentioned consequences. Why add insult to injury? Abortion pending rape is often called "further raping the raped" and no psychologist has found counterproof.

 

Not forgotten Aldeth,, just a little long in the planning. (I must try and remember not to digress as it is often the digression which get commented upon)

Edit: Apparently Toughluck has forgotten the original post which was about the UN's document and not about Abortion in general.

OK trying to return back to topic, which is whether the UN has overstepped its authority. My take on Chev’s original comments were:

A.) The UN document was saying that there was something wrong with doctors being allowed to make a conscientious objection to performing abortions.
B.) The UN contradicts itself in this document with the 1994 Cairo Conference on population and development.
C.) The UN shouldn’t be allowed to ask that objective and accurate sex education be provided.
D.) That the UN shouldn’t be allowed to require discriminatory acts and attitudes towards sexual minorities to go without investigation and unpunished.

And my response:
A.) If the UN had actually made an objection to the fact that individual doctors refused to perform abortions due to a conscientious objection then I would agree that they have overstepped their authority. However, I have read and re-read the document and it does not state that. The actual wording of the UN document states concern at the lack of information on the use of the conscientious objection clause used by doctors and that the state provide further information on the use of the conscientious objection clause used by doctors who refuse to perform legal abortions. All of the actual statements are all concerned with the lack of information.
Digression (Don’t bother to comment on it, this is the mind wandering)
You might be able to read an underlying implication that the state is not making enough doctors available who do not have this conscientious objection (hence why further information is obviously required) but, lets be honest, it’s reading a lot between the lines.

Therefore I do not believe the UN has overstepped it’s authority here.

B.) Unfortunately I am unable to get hold of the Cairo conference document, so my next argument is based on some assumptions. The Conference on Population and Development states that Abortion should not be promoted as a means of family planning. It does not state that abortion should not be available. In Britain, and I imagine a lot of Europe, we have family planning clinics where people can go and get free advice on family planning (by which we mean the avoidance of having children.) They generally dispense free (or cheap?) contraception. If these clinics were to advise that people should forget about contraception and just have an abortion, then that would be promotion and therefore against the wording from the Cairo conference. Provision of something is not promotion of it.

Therefore I don’t believe the UN is not in contradiction.

C.) As I stated earlier, Objective and Accurate are wooly words and left open to a certain amount of interpretation. That said, I would say that the “Objective” of sexual education was simply put, to prevent girls getting pregnant when they don’t want to. And “Accurate” to be the actual physical process involved in getting pregnant, and what steps can be taken to prevent the pregnancy occurring (i.e. contraception). I actually know people from my school days that believed (at the time) you couldn’t get pregnant the first time for instance. I do not know what sex education is given in Poland, and at what age.

Conclusion: I don’t think the UN can overstep it’s authority by encouraging education.

D.) Now here I agree that the UN chose the wrong word with “attitude”. However, it can be taken as reading “disposition or reaction to” something, so I believe contextually, the UN’s intention was not referring to thought processes, but discriminatory behavior such as refusing someone a job based on the sexual orientation.

(Incidently Chev, this is an example of what I was thinking of when stating that they should be without fear of discrimination.)

 

No assumptions here. I might have drawn a couple of conclusions basing directly on (at least seemingly) unequivocal statements, but no assumptions.

I would think that democracy relies basically on citizens uniting in their claims to grant them more strength within certain limits of civil conduct. It defies the purpose of democracy to accord a stronger representation (and, consequently, more influence) to a group that has less support in the society than to a group which has more support. The same way, it's only logical to give the voice of a globe-spanning international organisation more consideration than the voice of a minor one. Also, it's perfectly logical for a centuries-spanning tradition to give some credit to such an organisation. So much as their voice should indeed be heard, it's unreasonable to favour tiny upstart lobbies over organisations marked by long tradition and enjoying wide support on a global basis. I don't think you share the currently common misconception that democracy is all about minorities, so I don't understand your point here.

But how exactly does this give merit to a claim that the voice of the Church should be disregarded or at least given less attention?

Also, the need for separation of Church from state has practically always been stressed by both sides, starting from the early Roman church not wanting the Emperors to meddle with the doctrine and worship, and Emperors not wanting the clergy to meddle with politics. As such, it doesn't really serve as a valid argument for thwarting the same rights of the Church than any other numerous and influencial organisation characterised by a certain moral authority would possess, and favouring secular social organisations over religious or even religion-related ones.

But you're only arguing my point here, i.e. that support for abortion being legal relies on it being called something different from murder, while the purpose of it being called something different from murder is to warrant legalisation. This creates a loop.

You object to my calling the foetus a child, but yourself call it no different, as below.

Not to be a nitpicker, but here we seem to be perfectly in agreement. But to drag it a bit farther: if there's no crime, what warrants capital punishment?

But this amounts to punishing the child for the crime of his father. Why not indict the rapist's living children if he has any? Why not sue his family for damages?

Firstly, this still doesn't show any guilt on the part of the foetus, nor does it really warrant being put to death without committing a crime - if anything ever does.

Secondly, the same can be said about a child conceived from rape who is actually delivered.

Let's suppose the mother delivers the child. In fact, she could even have been denied abortion by the doctor or maybe even forced to carry it by the family or whomever. She clearly didn't want the child. And now she has it, and it reminds her of the rape every time she looks at it. Or maybe she did want to carry the child, but she discovered that whenever she looks at him, she sees the rapist and regrets her decision. So, should she be allowed to have it exterminated?

There's no agreement in the medical profession and there are titled professors of medicine who believe the child to be a human person from the moment of conception.

The methods of examination can be medical, but the criteria we set are of a social nature, not a medical one. Can in it survive when removed from the mother's body? Can it live on its own? Does it have certain organs developped? Is the gender clear? Whatever. All of those criteria have been adopted for the purpose of allowing abortion up to a certain point, and there are no medical grounds to decide which of these criteria makes a person (since when is person a medical term?), so the purposive approach is clear. Talk impartiality.

I'm not the judge of her. I don't know her mind, I don't know her heart. To find someone legally guilty of a crime, not only do we need an act to be committed, but we also need the person who committed the act to be guilty on a personal level. But this still doesn't make the act legal, even if the offender is acquitted. By analogy, we could extend this reasoning on the moral level. That's why I'm not judging the woman, although I neither find the act itself to be licit, nor believe it should be allowed, legal or however we call it.

As for the loaf of bread example: it's hard to consider someone a culpable thief and put him behind bars for lifting a loaf of bread when he was hungry. Firstly, he was badly in need of food and the spare change worth of a loss on the part of the owner is clearly not so grave as the loss of life would be for that hungry man. Secondly, his reasoning might well have been clouded by hunger up to the point of not being able to tell right from wrong, or not being able to control his actions. Although he should, if possible, repair the damage somehow, we can't punish him like a simple thief. Still, we can't declare such theft legal, because the favourable approach would be asking for it, even begging.

As a side point, although related to our examples, let's consider one situation:

We live in country X. Abortion is legal until N weeks. Woman Y has been raped by man Z and a child whas been conceived. She has a legal right to abort the child until those N weeks have passed. But something restricts her and she can't go to the abortion clinic through no fault of her own. Or maybe someone illegally restricts her from going there. Normally, if you can only make use of your right until a certain date and you fail to observe the deadline through no fault of your own, especially if you are illegally restricted by someone else, you can have the deadline extended for you. Her lawyer would most probably argue that the woman should be allowed to abort the child even though N weeks passed some time ago, because she was unable to exercise her right to abortion through no fault of her own.

So what would you do? Stick to N weeks for your own arbitrary reasons or "duly" protect the rights of the woman and let her have the child aborted?

Edit: And there's the reply from Carcaroth now.

The UN maybe not, but UN agendas need to observe the legal limits of their competence. Also, when they encourage education, they can't be allowed to encourage the teaching of something inconsistent with international laws and agreements. This way, the HRC can't encourage education in violation of Cairo Conference.

Also, it has been pointed out that the language used by the HRC hardly resembles advice and encouragement. They behave as if they had superior authority, which is in violation of the UN charter. They don't have any legal power to dictate legislation to a sovereign state.

As for the bad choice of words, I suppose it doesn't entirely come down to clumsiness. I don't think they are unaware of such basics of a civilised law that acts make a crime and not an attitude, or that investigating attitudes is what a bloody dictature would do and not a lawful state. I think they just rambled on and on in their crusade against homophobia and anti-abortionism and couldn't stop before it went too far, thus revealing their real views and goals.

And I still don't know where they got the idea that abortion is a human right.

[ December 21, 2004, 17:33: Message edited by: chevalier ]

 

Chev,

The education I was refering to was sexual education in schools and nothing to do with the Cairo Conference. You seem to be suggesting that the education proposed by the UN in schools would have included promoting abortion as a means of family planning, I think you'd have to stretch to get that from their document.

 

Not a single dime? Who pays for the incredible dietary changes that she goes through? New clothing to fit her expanding body. The medical needs, and doctor visits? She can't possibly work during the later parts of the pregnancy.

Abortion is further raping the raped? Do you think that when a woman is ready to give birth that a stork drops the new infant down a chimney?

Seems to me that forcing a woman who has been raped to go to full term with an unwanted baby is simply inhumane torture. The hormonal, dietary and emotional changes a woman goes through are unimaginal by men. Add to that the possibility of needing to get sliced open for the delivery...
well then you've just lengthened that poor woman's ordeal by a full 9 months.

Yeah, I know... "Well what'd the child do to deserve this?"

Well what does a woman do to deserve turning a violent, invasive crime against her, into a 9 month biological prison sentence?

I've seen pregnant women go CRAZY from the changes that are going on. I can't really even comprehend the psyche of a woman who's been raped, let alone combine that with the emotional drain of being pregnant.

and you think once she delivers she's just free to go along her merry way?

Guess again.

 

The lawyer and the woman can complain all they want but according to the law the doctor that aborts the foetus after the timelimit is committing a crime, and no doctor would take the risk. The law clearly states the limit and after the limit there is nothing neither the woman nor the lawyer can do, except of course illegal abortion.

Indeed but not even these doctors can through medical research say that a foetus of let's say 1000 cells is sentient in any way. So they base their arguments on religion and religion does not count as a legal nor as a medical argument.

When will you stop repeating this trash? No one (except possible the woman) is punished in abortion, and therefore no one is killed. A pregnancy is terminated in a similar way as it is terminated by a day-after pill or preventation such as condom. The fact that the foetus happens to contain "human DNA" does not make it a person.

It's a philosophical term really, and one can discuss to the end of the world about what makes a person but in medicine there are some biological criterias of which some you allready mention which together combined build up the time when abortion is allowed.

And I do not get where you got the idea that abortion is not a human right. Except of course religion which I'm sure you understand is irrelevant when determining human rights for a world with several religions.

 

Question: Is abortion legal in Poland? Or more to the point: Is there any country where abortion is illegal? Obviously, there are areas of the world where abortion is unavailable, but is there anywhere in the world where it is illegal to get an abortion? The answer to this question alone will dictate to a large extent whether or not the UN has over-stepped its authority.

 

Abortion is legal in Poland and in no western democracy is abortion illegal. I'm not sure about nations beyoned the western world though.

The EU was built upon the belief of following the human rights and no nation with serious violation against these rights (which abortion is a part of) should never ever be allowed as a member in the EU.

 

In that case, if no member nation of the UN has abortion as an illegal act, then there is absolutely nothing illegal about the UN's statement. It isn't overstepping its bounds, and its statement is in keeping with its overall policy.

This is the same arguement over and over again. Anti-abortionists seem to think that allowing someone to get an abortion is the same thing as being pro-abortion, when it's not. Most people in favor of abortion don't particularly like the idea of it, and certainly aren't advocating killing babies. It's just that they don't see abortion as the killing of babies, and they certainly aren't MAKING anyone get an abortion who does not wish to.

All they are saying is you have that choice. But whatever that decision is, you do not have the right to villify others for making a decision different from your own.

 

Abortion is if not illegal so severly restricted in Portugal and in Ireland as well. I am not completely sure but I know there have been quite a ruckus about abortion in Portugal lately and various organisations have put abortion ships off the shore of Portugal where Portuguese women could come to have an abortion.

 

Well according to my knowledge it is not banned in any EU nation. It may be restricted though but I'm not sure exactly how it is restricted in these countries. Now that you mentioned it I remember hearing something about Portugal, can't remember what though.

 

Well Gnarff,
in response to your question: Might makes not right.

The United Nations did succeed to stop Iraq when they invaded Kuwait. When they didn’t stop the US to invade Iraq that was first of all because the US are a veto-wielding power in the UN security council, very much unlike Iraq.

The UN will necessarily fail when, as in the case of the recent US invasion of Iraq, the fox is tasked with guarding the henhouse.

The actual problem with the UN is it's structure in the security council that benefits the WW-II victor powers only.

 

All is covered from state funding and charities (the major part). Indeed, there are fundraising events for them, as state provides only basic needs (such as free medical care) and legal provisions for such facilities. As for dietary changes, clothing and [medical] needs - all is "on facility," and thus costs can be minimised. The fact that the expecting mother is not so much taken care of as taking care for herself also lowers the cost. Once you sum it all up cost doesn't go up that steeply.

We can agree to disagree here. You can say that abortion has absolutely no effects on the woman's health and psyche, and I can tell you that psychologists agree on PAS and its effects. Besides, do you think the woman wouldn't go CRAZY after abortion with the huge hormonal change she would go through??? You think THAT is completely neutral to her health? Not to mention the emotional drain.

And you want to give that (irresponsible due to the changes) woman the right to decide on something that important? Sheesh, talk about double standards - the foetus is not to be considered a full persona, and thus has no legal protection, and yet the woman who is not fully responsible should have the weight of the situation up to her?

PAS lengthens that ordeal by her full lifetime. What's better?

If neither the woman nor the child is responsible, who is? The rapist. So why does the law usually protect them? Why is it in their favour? Why are women able to have an abortion but are unable to sue the rapist? Who is the culprit and why is he left unpersecuted, but the unguilty child is?


As for life. What is it? After conception, the cell begins to show signs of life. It begins to divide, it begins to live. Live a life of a new person. If that is not life, where does life begin? At what stage can you tell when life is, and when it isn't? Are these stages discretionary?

A child straight after birth has no cognitive abilities at all. It relies on pure and bare instinct. There is absolutely no reason with it. It has no memory processes that we are aware of because of the lack of reasoning skills to name what is being memorised. Something like writing a raw file with absolutely no standard format to a harddrive, but at a random offset and without filename (or any mention in the FAT). You could recover that information by chance, but not on a huge harddrive - that would take too long and you wouldn't know how to read it anyway.
It does lead me to a point: if that infant is not really a human person, the mother should be able and free to "abort" him or her because it is not yet a human being.

When is that time?

 

The difference between us and slugs, etc is brains, therefore:

Well put.

/Me quits conversation, singing "Everry sperm is sacccreeddd/every sperm is great/if a sperm is wasted/God gets quite irate..."

 

Ragusa, Does this mean that an overhaul of how the Security council functions would be required for the UN to be relevent in the Future?

Caracoth, It concerns me that the UN would choose that word. I don't think that Gays should be beaten or be kept from a job unless homosexuality is a conflict of interests (some clergy positions), but I don't want to feel compelled to support their chosen lifestyle either.

 

I agree the word chosen was not the best choice in the English language, and has obviously led to two different interpretations as to what the UN actually meant. I'd be very surprised to find this was intentional though. We are not living in Orwell's 1984, and we are not about to get people policing our thoughts.
I do not know exactly how the UN works, but it is obviously multi-lingual. I doubt anyone knows which nationalities were actually involved in the preparation of the document, or the nationality of the writer. "Attitude" does not have to mean a thought process. For example, describing someone as having a "bad attitude" generally means they also engage in bad behaviour. To argue that the UN has overstepped it's authority based on one word is ludicrous. I doubt the document is written by a legal team, and even if it was, a lot of the discusion on this forum by the more legally minded is often mis-interpreted and taken out of context.