The San Jose Articles: the United Nations' abortion lies exposed

Canadians should support MP Jeff Watson's call for Parliament to re-open the debate on abortion. We need to educate ourselves about the truth. For too long now, most people in Canada and the international community have come to believe that there’s a "fundamental human right" to abortion. This is totally false. Yes, you read that correctly. In Canada, we currently have no law on abortion, and no United Nations treaty makes abortion an international right. However, many nations have been pressured by the UN, as it recently happened in Colombia, to change their laws because of this false assumption. It’s time nations push back this culture of death. We need to unmask the lies. The San Jose Articles are designed to help countries do just that.

The United Nations has no legal and no moral authority into forcing member countries to accept abortion as a "legal right". They have been advocating a lie as if it were a truth. This evil effort has served to promote abortion internationally and to continue to deceive and intimidate those countries that are currently pro-life. The San Jose Articles provide a legal defence to combat the anti-life propaganda and expose the lies. Let's hope that all counties begin to use them to bring an end to abortion and the deceptive means by which the pro-abortionists at the UN spread the culture of death.

What follows are the objectives the Articles are designed to address and the articles themselves.

The Aim

“The purpose of the San Jose Articles is to provide expert testimony that no such right exists. The San Jose Articles were prepared by a group of 31 experts in international law, international relations, international organizations, public health, science/medicine and government. The signers include law professors, philosophers, Parliamentarians, Ambassadors, human rights lawyers, and delegates to the UN General Assembly.

“The purpose of the San Jose Articles is also to demonstrate that the unborn child is already protected in human rights instruments and that governments should begin protecting the unborn child by using international law."

San Jose Articles

"Article 1. As a matter of scientific fact a new human life begins at conception.

"Article 2. Each human life is a continuum that begins at conception and advances in stages until death. Science gives different names to these stages, including zygote, blastocyst, embryo, fetus, infant, child, adolescent and adult. This does not change the scientific consensus that at all points of development each individual is a living member of the human species.

"Article 3. From conception each unborn child is by nature a human being.

"Article 4. All human beings, as members of the human family, are entitled to recognition of their inherent dignity and to protection of their inalienable human rights. This is recognized in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and other international instruments.

"Article 5. There exists no right to abortion under international law, either by way of treaty obligation or under customary international law. No United Nations treaty can accurately be cited as establishing or recognizing a right to abortion.

"Article 6. The Committee on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW Committee) and other treaty monitoring bodies have directed governments to change their laws on abortion. These bodies have explicitly or implicitly interpreted the treaties to which they are subject as including a right to abortion.

"Article 7. Assertions by international agencies or non-governmental actors that abortion is a human right are false and should be rejected.

"Article 8. Under basic principles of treaty interpretation in international law, consistent with the obligations of good faith and pacta sunt servanda, and in the exercise of their responsibility to defend the lives of their people, states may and should invoke treaty provisions guaranteeing the right to life as encompassing a state responsibility to protect the unborn child from abortion.

"Article 9. Governments and members of society should ensure that national laws and policies protect the human right to life from conception. They should also reject and condemn pressure to adopt laws that legalize or depenalize abortion."

Everyday For Life Canada believes it’s important for governments, health care professionals, lawyers, doctors, priests, parents and for all citizens the world over to share and act on these articles of life. It was this truth about the sanctity of life that Blessed John Paul II's encyclical called, Evangelium vitae (The Gospel of Life) urges the faithful to safeguard at all costs. This is one of the truths that served to define John Paul II's entire pontificate.

The language of truth in the San Jose Articles takes a bold and necessary step forward in raising an awareness of the lies about abortion "rights" both at the national and international level. It's this kind of pro-life effort that can help restore a culture of life in the world. We hope it will serve as guide for Canada and the rest of the world to reconsider the evil of abortion and pass new laws making it a crime to kill unborn. In the end, the truth will win out over evil.

The articles were published in San Jose, Costa Rica on March 25, 2011. Please do spread this refreshing word of truth; this life-saving information to help promote the pro-life message with the hope of saving countless, innocent human lives.