The UN and human rights
There has been a flurry of news out of a UN statement on the rights and dignity of persons with disabilities. It’s a good news/bad news document.
The newly approved United Nations “Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities” which was adopted by the General Assembly Wednesday forbids nations which sign on to it from denying “food and fluids” to disabled persons.
Article 25 of the Convention, which deals with health, directs (in sub-section f) nations to “Prevent discriminatory denial of health care or health services or food and fluids on the basis of disability.”
Commenting on the development, Alex Schadenberg of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition told LifeSiteNews.com that “To cause death by dehydration by denying food and fluids to a person based on their disability or cognitive ability, such as Terri Schiavo, is to kill them by euthanasia.”
It’s about time the United Nations took this step to fulfill its mandate to defend human rights. This is excellent. The convention is trying to protect the rights and recognize the dignity of all people.
All people out of the womb, that is. LifeNews explains that the document has a language problem.
Yesterday, the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted the first new human rights treaty of the twenty-first century called the “Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.”
The Assembly approved the convention despite its mentioning the right to “sexual and reproductive health” services to be made available to persons with disabilities. Speaking from inside the United Nations complex, Sam Singson of the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute told LifeSiteNews.com that the battle would now move to the implementation of the convention where pro-life activists at the UN will work to ensure no nation is pushed to legalize abortion based on the Disabilities Convention.
Singson explained that the “spirit of the document” was decisively against an interpretation of “sexual and reproductive health” as inclusive of abortion. Fifteen nations made interpretive statements on the term “sexual and reproductive health” noting that it did not include abortion, with no nation contradicting that interpretation.
Moreover, the Convention in article 10, guarantees the “right to life” for the disabled. It states that nations which sign on to the convention “reaffirm that every human being has the inherent right to life and shall take all necessary measures to ensure its effective enjoyment by persons with disabilities on an equal basis with others.”
The Holy See (Vatican) representative pointed out the irony in its statement on the adoption of the Convention. “We opposed the inclusion of such a phrase in this article,” said the Holy See representative, “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.”
They’re on the right track, but it has two rails, and one of them is dangerously loose.