Human Rights Watchdog Group Criticizes United States on Abortion 
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by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
October 30, 2006
Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) — An organization that is supposed to monitor international human rights abuses is instead furthering its pro-abortion agenda and has issued comments responding to a new report condemning various states in the U.S. for their pro-life laws that place sensible limits on abortion.
Human Rights Watch condemned the laws in some states that it sways is infringing on the so-called right to an abortion.
"The mounting obstacles to abortion services include in some states a legal requirement to provide medically inaccurate information as part of obligatory pre-abortion counseling," Marianne Mollmann, of the group’s women’s rights division, told UPI.
The group condemned laws that require abortion practitioners to tell women about abortion’s link to breast cancer.
"There is a direct assault on women’s right to safe abortion through deliberate misinformation," Mollmann said.
However, Dr. Joel Brind, a professor at New York’s Baruch College, when he conducted an analysis of all research on abortion and breast cancer done to date, concluded that women who had an abortion before their first term child had a 50% increased risk of developing breast cancer while women who had an abortion after their first child sustained a 30% increased risk.
Mollmann’s comments come in response to a new report issued by a group affiliated with Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest abortion business.
The Alan Guttmacher Institute attacked state laws that tell women about various aspects of abortion — from the pain a baby may feel during the abortion to the medical and emotional risks abortion presents to referring women to pregnancy centers for alternatives.
This isn’t the first time Human Rights Watch has listed limiting abortions as a so-called human rights violation.
Despite daily violations of human rights occurring daily around the world — from the genocide in Darfur to the extreme poverty due to the North Korean regime — HRW will soon reward a Mexican activist who helps raped women obtain abortions.
Earlier this month, HRW announced it will give its highest award to Veronica Cruz on November 2.
Cruz is the founder and head of Las Libres (The Free Women), a pro-abortion group in the Mexican state of Guanajuato which directs women victimized by rape to places where they can get abortions.
The actions of human rights watchdog groups have come under increased scrutiny as they have not spoken out on key pro-life issues such as forced abortions in China.
Amnesty International is coming under fire for considering changing its long-standing position of neutrality on abortion. The group is considering add abortion to its list of human rights violations.
AI will likely have a discussion and vote on the issue at its annual meeting in Mexico City in 2007 but the debate is already heating up in advance.
AI could adopt the pro-abortion position by a consensus or formal vote or send the discussion back to its affiliates for further consideration.
The group would likely begin filing lawsuits on behalf of women in nations where abortion is illegal. AI’s proposal says it will encourage NGOs who lobby at the UN to press for an international document saying abortion is a human right.
Currently, Amnesty International says it “takes no position on whether or not women have a right to choose to terminate unwanted pregnancies; there is no generally accepted right to abortion in international human rights law.”
ACTION: Contact Human Rights Watch with your concerns: 350 Fifth Avenue, 34th floor, New York, NY 10118-3299, phone – (212) 290-4700, fax – (212) 736-1300, email – [email protected]
