Human Rights Council Notes Children’s Rights, Ignores Abortion Kills Children
by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
March 16, 2009
Geneva, Switzerland (LifeNews.com) — The Human Rights Council (HRC) marked the 20th anniversary of the Convention on the Rights of the Child last week, but a leading pro-life advocate says the human rights group ignored how abortion kills children. HRC supports children after birth but it has a long history of ignoring them beforehand.
Pat Buckley, a lobbyist for the England-based Society for the Protection of Unborn Children, was in Geneva where he was lobbying the HRC to respect the lives of unborn children.
"The HRC panels comprehensively considered all the major issues on the topic of children’s rights except the ‘elephant in the room’ — the abortion question which was studiously ignored by all," he said.
Buckley noted the "bitter irony" of the event was summed up by the contribution of Maud de Boer-Buquichio, Deputy Secretary-General of the Council of Europe, who highlighted the Council of Europe’s efforts to promote and protect children’s rights.
That’s the same Council that, last year, approved a resolution calling on its member nations to legalize abortion or pave the way for more abortions if they’ve already done so. Pro-life advocates in Ireland, Malta and Poland are concerned the measure will add to pressure to force them to overturn their pro-life laws.
During her talk, de Boer-Buquichio said, “The starting point for our work is in recognizing that children are not mini-persons with mini-human rights –- in fact they need more protection, not less."
"Adults want children to grow up and respect the world they are born in. It is high time that our adult world also respect children’s rights," she added.
John Smeaton, the head of SPUC, responded to her comments.
He said that the Convention on the Rights of the Child "recognizes that a child needs appropriate legal protection before, as well as after birth."
"Given that tens of millions of unborn children are denied such legal protection by being dismembered, killed by being sucked through a tube with sharp-edged openings near the tip of the tube, or killed by being prevented from implanting in the lining of the womb by making it unreceptive to the newly-conceived embryo … on what grounds are these children’s rights being totally ignored by the Human Rights Council?" he asked.
"This would be an interesting question for politicians to pursue with their various governments around the world," Smeaton added.
Last April, the HRC pressured Poland to legalize abortions.
Related web sites:
SPUC – https://www.spuc.org.uk
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