An organization in favor of legalized abortion is asking the United Nations Committee Against Torture to tell the Catholic Church that the church cannot stand against abortion reports CNS News.
The Center for Reproductive Rights sent a letter to the committee in April saying that “freedom of speech and of religion” does not give the church the right against abortion.
“Urge the Holy See to refrain from negatively interfering publicly or privately in women’s or legislators’ decisions concerning access to abortion and to support states as they attempt to align their policies on women’s reproductive rights with their obligations under the convention,” the letter said.
The Center for Reproductive Rights also said in its letter that the rights of freedom of speech and of religion “extend only so far as they do not undermine women’s reproductive rights.”
Earlier this year, the U.N. Committee on the Rights of the Child issued a report urging the Catholic Church to change its teaching on abortion.
“The Committee urges the Holy See to review its position on abortion, which places obvious risks on the life and health of pregnant girls, and to amend Canon 1398 relating to abortion with a view to identifying circumstances under which access to abortion services may be permitted,” the Committee on the Rights of the Child said in a Feb. 25 report on the Vatican’s compliance with the Convention on the Rights of the Child.
The Catholic Association, however, has criticized the U.N. committees.
“The U.N., of course, has no jurisdiction whatsoever to do this,” said Maureen Ferguson, the senior policy advisor for the Catholic Association.
“The irony here is just unbelievable,” she said, “that in the name of the rights of the child, on the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the United Nations is telling the church you have to change your position on the protection of children, on abortion.
Publication date: May 12, 2014
