Lima, Peru, Jun 16, 2011 / 12:02 pm
The Organization of American States rejected a treaty which would have pressured member countries to legalize abortion and same-sex unions.
“In other words, a legal pathway for approving what they have not been able to get passed in national congresses,” the Population Research Institute’s Office for Latin America explained in its latest bulletin.
The “Convention on Sexual and Reproductive Rights,” is a decade-long attempt to achieve an international treaty that includes the legalization of abortion, the legal protection of any type of sexual behavior or orientation and the recognition of reproductive and sexual rights as human rights.
The institute said delegates at the 41st Ordinary Session OAS meeting, held June 5-7, never even considered discussion of the convention. It included representatives from all member states and from 147 civil organizations.
“It was never on the list of resolutions to be discussed or published on the OAS website,” the Population Research Institute noted.
Georgina de Rivas, executive director of the Foundation Yes to Life in El Salvador, told CNA that the convention includes “the ‘right’ to chose when to be pregnant and the ‘right’ to end a pregnancy as well.”
“(I)t clearly refers to abortion.”
Rivas added that the document also contemplates “homosexual unions with the ability to adopt.” It “proposes sexual and reproductive rights for people of all ages,” she said.
Rivas went on to note that the convention promotes “the right to eroticism, the right to pleasure,” and even includes children among those who hold these alleged rights. She said it also seeks “a ‘re-educating of the signing countries, that is, to commit governments to carrying out campaigns to re-educate professionals as well as teachers, doctors, psychologists, etc, in order get the culture used to the things that it is being exposed to,” Rivas said.
She noted that another dangerous aspect of the convention is the “radical limitation of conscientious objection at the professional level.”
She told CNA her main concern was that the Secretary General of the OAS, Jose Miguel Insulza, told the gay and feminist lobbies “he agreed with the convention…and he probably didn’t even read the document’s contents.”
Rivas also said delegates at the OAS meeting were “taken by surprise” when a group of abortion supporters interrupted the discussions and “demanded that the convention be introduced.”
The delegates “did not expect to suddenly see so many people demanding this during a closed-door session,” she stated.
Delegates had expected the meeting to focus on drug trafficking, the lack of security resulting from gang activity, and the high level of violence occurring throughout Latin America, and not on the issue of “sexual and reproductive rights,” Rivas said.
She urged vigilance regarding the actions of pro-abortion groups, which she said “have not conceded defeat, they are going to continuing pushing” for the controversial convention. “I suspect they will push for it again at the 42nd Session of the OAS” in 2012, she added.