UN states told they must legalise abortion | Society | guardian.co.uk

greaterthanlapsed:

Member states of the UN general assembly – some of whom are prepared to prosecute and jail a woman who seeks an abortion – have been told in blunt terms by their own special rapporteur for health that they are infringing woman’s human rights.

See? This is dangerous territory and pretty much where my belief systems collide.

On the one hand, I am fiercely pro-choice and I wish for abortion to be available for everyone who needs it legally, in sanitary conditions and protecting the rights of people to make decisions about their own bodies and lives. So, let’s get that out of the way, lest someone believes I am somehow against abortion. 

On the other hand, an international body of the magnitude of the UN making such a statement is well… interfering with the rights of countries to their sovereignty. The issue of abortion rights, in the Global South, is not as black and white as it might be in places like the European Union. Just to use one example: Ollanta Humala was elected President of Peru a few months ago, running on a platform that promised to repair the Indigenous rights of hundreds of thousands of people who were the victims of forced sterilizations from the mid 90’s to the early ‘00s. Official figures from the Peruvian government say that 350,000 women and roughly 30,000 men were the victims of such policies. The intent was one of genocide of indigenous groups in Peru, who were perceived by Fujimori’s government as “threatening” due to their influence in Peruvian politics. Genocide. The entire elimination of an ethnic group through forceful sterilization. And in this context, to even debate abortion is painful, emotional and an issue of survival. It cannot be forced upon by the UN because such statements remove all historical context and the very reasons why people might be against abortion to begin with.

So, I am peeved by this UN special raporteur who issued an official UN document that actually undermines people’s right to discuss these subjects at their own pace and respecting their social and political processes. People, the people of countries in the Global South, are not mindless cattle that need to be prodded in order to follow “sensible policies”. They’ll get there eventually, but the UN is not helping the case with bombastic interventions like this one.