Pro-life advocates warn against disabilities treaty

September 14, 2012

Pro-life advocates have joined a leading homeschooling organization in urging the Senate not to ratify the United Nation’s Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD). President Barack Obama signed the treaty in 2009, but the Senate has not yet ratified it, even though it was recently approved by a Senate subcommittee.

In 2006, the Holy See announced that it would not sign the CPRD. Archbishop Celestino Migliore, at the time apostolic nuncio to the United Nations, said that the Holy See could interpret two ambiguous articles of the treaty “in a way which safeguards the primary and inalienable rights of parents.”

The inclusion of the phrase “reproductive health” in article 25, however, led to the Holy See’s refusal to sign the accord. Archbishop Migliore said:

We opposed the inclusion of such a phrase [reproductive health] in this article, because in some countries reproductive health services include abortion, thus denying the inherent right to life of every human being, affirmed by article 10 of the Convention. It is surely tragic that, wherever fetal defect is a precondition for offering or employing abortion, the same Convention created to protect persons with disabilities from all discrimination in the exercise of their rights, may be used to deny the very basic right to life of disabled unborn persons.

For this reason, and despite the many helpful articles this Convention contains, the Holy See is unable to sign it.

 

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Further information:

• US Experts Testify on Dangers of Disabilities Treaty (Catholic Family & Human Rights Institute)
• Homeschool group warns: disabilities treaty will harm parental rights (CWN, 7/17)