Access to Abortion Is a Human Right

From ACSblog:

In a landmark decision, the United Nations Human Rights Committee decided yesterday that legal access to abortion is a basic human right for women. Luisa Cabal, Director of the International Legal Program at the Center for Reproductive Rights, said of the decision, "Every woman who lives in any of the 154 countries that are party to this treaty -- including the U.S -- now has a legal tool to use in defense of her rights. This ruling establishes that it is not enough to just grant a right on paper. Where abortion is legal it is governments' duty to ensure that women have access to it."

The ruling came as a result of a lawsuit -- Karen Llontoy v. Peru -- filed by the Center for Reproductive Rights, the Latin American and Caribbean Committee for the Defense of Women's Rights (CLADEM), and the Counseling Center for the Defense of Women's Rights (DEMUS).

Karen Llontoy is a Peruvian woman who was forced to carry to term a pregnancy in which the fetus had anancephaly, meaning that the fetus lacked all or most of a forebrain. Anancephalic babies die at birth or shortly thereafter.

Llontoy, who was 17 years old at the time (in 2001), decided to have an abortion after prenatal testing revealed the anancephaly; she was in the second week of her second trimester when she found out about it. She was denied the abortion because the law in Peru is unclear as to when and under what conditions therapeutic abortions are permissible, even though such abortions are legal in Peru. The director of the public hospital in Lima where the fetus was diagnosed refused to let Llontoy end the pregnancy. Llontoy was forced to breast-feed for the four days that the infant lived.

Karen Llontoy's physical and psychological health was significantly damaged by the cruel and degrading way she was treated.

A reader commented here the other day about having had an abortion in similar circumstances (her fetus had a condition incompatible with life). This reader remarked on how she had to travel to another state to find a doctor who would induce labor early, so that she and her husband would be able to hold their baby and say goodbye without having to go through with a pregnancy they had decided to end.

Both Karen Llontoy and my reader live in countries where the abortion they sought was legal; but they were arbitrarily denied access to abortion (or had to struggle to get access, in my reader's case).

That is one reason why this ruling is so important.

"Many women around the world face barriers to abortion even where it is legal," says Lilian Sepulveda, Legal Adviser for Latin America and the Caribbean at the Center for Reproductive Rights. "Providers refusing to provide services, restrictions on clinics, waiting periods, affordability issues, spousal and parental authorization, all represent barriers to legal abortion. Denying women access to basic reproductive health services -- such as access to legal abortion -- is a violation of their human rights, and finally there is a statement from international human rights law that holds governments accountable."

The ruling specifically establishes violations to the right to be free from cruel, inhumane, and degrading treatment, privacy, special protection of the rights of a minor. It orders the Peruvian government to provide Llontoy with reparations, and to adopt the necessary regulations to guarantee access to legal abortion.

Those of us who have worked and struggled for decades to secure and maintain the right to choose when and whether we will experience pregnancy and childbirth have always known that the ability to make our own health decisions and control what happens to our own bodies is a human right. Now the United Nations Human Rights Committee has made it official: You can't claim to support human rights unless you protect and defend reproductive rights:

"Every woman who lives in any of the 154 countries that are party to this treaty -- including the U.S. -- now has a legal tool to use in defense of her rights. This ruling establishes that it is not enough to just grant a right on paper. Where abortion is legal it is governments' duty to ensure that women have access to it."

Amen to that.