UN to Define Pregnancy Without Access to Abortion as “Torture”

Posted By Daniel Greenfield

On March 24, 2013 @ 8:42 pm

Quick question. If we replaced the United Nations with the population of an insane asylum would anyone even notice, and if so how?
In a new report by the special rapporteur on torture, Juan E. Méndez, to the United Nations General Assembly, he broadens the term “torture” to mean any obstacle to lefty social policies.

“The Committee against Torture has repeatedly expressed concerns about restrictions on access to abortion and about absolute abortion bans as violating the prohibition on torture and ill treatment.”

So pregnancy without abortion is now torture. Unfortunately it appears that Juan E. Méndez’s mother had a disturbing amount of torture inflicted on her. If only he had been around to prevent his own birth.

Examples of such violations include abusive treatment and humiliation in institutional settings; involuntary sterilization; denial of legally available health services such as abortion and post-abortion care; .  .  . female genital mutilation

Mendez equates lack of abortion services with forced sterilization and female gential mutilation, putting the left’s insane moral equivalence on full display.
The report pushes the notion that denying the information needed to abortion “unfit” babies is a violation of human rights…

In the case of R.R. v. Poland, for instance, ECHR found a violation of article 3 in the case of a woman who was denied access to prenatal genetic testing when an ultrasound revealed a potential foetal abnormality. The Court recognized “that the applicant was in a situation of great vulnerability” and that R.R.‟s access to genetic testing was “marred by procrastination, confusion and lack of proper counselling and information given to the applicant”. Access to information about reproductive health is imperative to a woman‟s ability to exercise reproductive autonomy, and the rights to health and to physical integrity.

R.R. v. Poland was about a case where doctors supposedly denied genetic tests because they were opposed to abortion. The child had Turner Syndrome which involves a webbed neck and some physical deformities. The mother claims that her husband left her over the birth of the baby girl, which could have otherwise been killed.
Naturally the report also claims that only recognizing men who get sex change operations as women is also torture and insists that men who wear dresses are also women if they say that they are.
In other news, the Syrian Civil War death toll is inching up to 100,000. China is continuing its occupation of Tibet. Turkey is continuing its occupation of Cyprus. And North Korea has intergenerational concentration camps and a nuclear program.
So clearly the UN’s work is done. But here is what actual torture looks like from the Socialist utopia of North Korea.

One inmate, Choe Kwang Ho, sneaked away from his work for 15 minutes to pick fruit. He was executed, his mouth stuffed with gravel to prevent him from protesting, Jung recalled.
Before he was imprisoned, Jung took his eldest daughter, then 8, to the execution of a prisoner in 1997 in the city of Chongjin. She watched solemnly as the inmate’s skull was smashed to pieces.
“She asked me, ‘Hey Daddy, is he vomiting?”‘ Jung recalled, a bitter grimace curling his lips. “I should not have taken her there.”
An said he served as a guard and driver at four camps before defecting in 1994. If a female inmate got pregnant, he said, she and her lover would be shot to death publicly. Then, An said, prison guards would cut open her womb, remove the fetus and bury it or feed it to guard dogs.

From Mendez’s perspective, this would be another triumph for abortion rights.