The UN Working Group on the issue of discrimination against women in law and in practice conducted a visit
to the United States last week and denounced laws restricting and
regulating abortion as discriminatory and interfering with "women's
reproductive rights".
The
Group railed against state laws on abortion, designed to protect
women's safety and provide for an informed and non-coerced decision,
calling the laws "severe barriers" to women's rights asserting:
"These
take the form of unjustified medical procedures, such as compelling
women to undergo ultrasounds or to endure groundless waiting periods,
withholding of early pregnancy abortion medications, imposing burdensome
conditions for the licensing of clinics, which have resulted in the
closing of clinics across the country leaving women without geographical
access to sexual and reproductive health services."
The visit to Montgomery, Alabama, Austin and the Rio Grande Valley in Texas, and Washington, D.C.
was reported to be timely given "there are increasingly restrictive
legislative measures in some states and violent attacks to prevent
women's access to exercise of their reproductive rights."
The
Group promoted adoption of the Woman's Health Protection Act which it
declared "would prohibit states from enacting restrictions on
reproductive health care providers that interfere with women's personal
decision making and block access to safe and legal abortion services;
and to require all hospitals to provide these services and insurance
schemes to provide coverage for abortions to which women have a right
under US law."
The Working
Group--a Special Procedure under the auspices of the United Nations
Human Rights Council to advance non-discrimination against women--on its
first country visit to the US
called for "increased funding of clinics under the Title X Family
Planning Program in order to expand coverage for low-income women who
lack insurance in order for them to access preventive care, including
sexual and reproductive health services..."
Opposition
to conscientious objection and religious freedom was expressed in the
strongest terms as the Group-- sounding like pro-abortion activists and
repeating pro-abortion arguments-- proclaimed:
"We
wish to recall, as independent United Nations human rights experts have
consistently stressed, that freedom of religion cannot be used to
justify discrimination against women, and therefore should not be
regarded as a justification for denying women's right to enjoyment of
the highest attainable standard of health. We encourage steps to
reconcile U.S. laws on religious or conscience-based refusals to provide
reproductive health care with international human rights law and to
prohibit refusal to provide sexual and reproductive health services on
grounds of religious freedom, where such refusal will effectively deny
women immediate access to the health care to which they are entitled
under both international human rights law and US law."
The delegation comprised of members Eleonora Zielinska, Frances Raday and Alda Facio
claimed that the "stigma attached to reproductive and sexual health
care" leads to "violence, harassment and intimidation against those
seeking or providing reproductive health care" and called on authorities
to "investigate and prosecute violence or threats of violence".
The
Group charged "many of the clinics work in conditions of constant
threats, harassment and vandalising, too often without any kind of
protection measures by law enforcement officials" and claimed that it
observed such actions during its visits to Texas and Alabama.
It maintained that shooting at the Colorado Planned Parenthood
clinic "once again demonstrated the extreme hostility and danger faced
by family planning providers and patients."
Members
of the Group were appointed by the Human Rights Council and include
former "experts" who served on the treaty monitoring body for the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). Not surprisingly, the Group strongly urged the US to ratify the CEDAW convention stating that the US is "one
of only seven countries which have not ratified CEDAW" despite the fact
that the "US government committed to ratify the Convention on the
Elimination of All of Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW)" in
2010 and 2015, "in the framework of its Universal Periodic Review."
The Group charged that it "is a myth that women already enjoy all these rights and protections under US law."
According
to the Group, opposition to CEDAW reflects "political resistance" that
has also "consistently blocked efforts to pass an Equal Rights
Amendment, which would entrench women's right to equality in the US
Constitution."
It
should be noted that CEDAW regularly instructs countries to remove
pro-life laws declaring that such laws are discriminatory since they
only apply to women.
The
Group used the visit to issue negative comments about the Republican
candidates for president as it stated,"...our visit is particularly
timely at a moment when the political rhetoric of some of the candidates
for the Presidency in the upcoming elections has included unprecedented
hostile stereotyping of women."
In its conclusion, the Group asserted,
"The
United States, which is a leading state in formulating international
human rights standards, is allowing its women to lag behind
international human rights standards. Although there is a wide diversity
in state law and practice, which makes it impossible to give a
comprehensive report, we could discern an overall picture of women's
missing rights."
Radical
US NGOs assisted the Group during its visit. The findings and
conclusions will be developed and presented in a comprehensive report to
the Human Rights Council in June 2016.