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This potential ‘Roe V. Wade of Latin America’ is threatening right-to-life efforts on an international scale...

Michie

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A case that is potentially the Roe v. Wade of Latin America is now being considered by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in Costa Rica. The plaintiffs in Beatriz v. El Salvador are asking the court to declare the right to abortion to be an internationally recognized human right.

Such a declaration would be a major setback for the right to life on an international scale. The right to abortion is absent from the world’s treaties, conventions, and covenants with the exception of the Maputo Protocol of the African Charter of 2003, where this right was inserted at the behest of its powerful advocates in the West. Until recent years, Latin America has been a region of strong pro-life laws, though in the past decade, Argentina, Chile, Colombia, and other states have liberalized their abortion laws. A declaration of the right to abortion in the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, including some 20 countries in its jurisdiction, would advance the profile and status of abortion rights around the world.

These stakes make all the more significant the testimony at this trial of Paolo Carozza, a human rights lawyer who is a professor at the University of Notre Dame Law School and the former President of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. His testimony is one of the most eloquent, forceful, and succinct statements of the human rights of the unborn that one can find. About 10 minutes long, it merits viewing and being shown in classes, lectures, and forums on the right to life. (Here is ND Law’s story on his testimony.)

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