What the UN’s ruling on abortion in Ecuador and Nicaragua means for the rest of the world

Although implementation will depend on each country, these sorts of rulings have a potential for global influence

By Elizabeth Hlavinka
February 19, 2025

The United Nations Human Rights Committee issued a ruling last month with the potential to expand reproductive rights in Ecuador and Nicaragua. Although it’s unclear how each country will implement the UN mandates handed down, the ruling is a step forward for a growing reproductive rights movement working to decriminalize abortion in Latin America.

In 2016, Planned Parenthood Global, Amnesty International, and other Latin American activism groups came together to form the “Son Niñas, No Madres” (Girls, Not Mothers) movement. They have filed legal cases before the UN Human Rights Committee against Ecuador and Nicaragua, representative of a regional pattern of girls forced to become mothers due to sexual violence and a lack of access to reproductive health services like abortion in 2019.

Continued: https://www.salon.com/2025/02/19/what-the-uns-ruling-on-abortion-in-ecuador-and-nicaragua-means-for-the-rest-of-the-world/

UN ruling on pregnant girls offers hope for abortion care

Enid Muthoni, Lori Adelman
Jan 29, 2025
Center for Reproductive Rights

Nicaraguan Susana was 13-years-old when she became pregnant by her grandfather, who had repeatedly raped her. When she found out, Susana said she did not want to continue with the pregnancy, and, with the help of her grandmother, pled five times for the complaint against her aggressor to be accepted. In a country like Nicaragua, which totally bans abortion and has normalized human rights violations, voices like Susana's are not heard. She was forced into motherhood, while her aggressor was never prosecuted. However, this month Susana finally got justice on Jan. 20.

On the same day Donald Trump returned to the White House, the United Nations Human Rights Committee delivered three groundbreaking rulings, holding Ecuador and Nicaragua responsible for grave human rights violations against Susana and two other young survivors of rape who were forced into motherhood. The Committee is clear: everyone, and with greater emphasis on girls, has the right to be free from sexual violence and free to make their own choices. Although the decisions are about the cases of Norma from Ecuador and Lucía and Susana from Nicaragua, they set a new international standard for more than 170 signatory countries of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, including the United States.

Continued: https://www.context.news/socioeconomic-inclusion/opinion/un-ruling-on-pregnant-girls-offers-hope-for-abortion-care

29.01.2025

News

International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights

Movimiento Son Niñas No Madres

Planned Parenthood Global

rape and abortion

sexual violence

United Nations Human Rights Committee

Clinicians to Lawmakers: Abortion Bans in the United States are Causing a Health and Human Rights Crisis

On the 51st anniversary of Roe v. Wade, abortion bans continue to harm patients and put clinicians in impossible situations. Physicians for Human Rights joins the renewed call for protection of fundamental rights to health and reproductive justice.

January 18, 2024
By William Jaffe, Advocacy Coordinator

January 22 will mark the 51st anniversary of Roe v. Wade, which established federal protection of the right to abortion in the United States. Since June 2022, when the Supreme Court reversed Roe, at least 14 states have adopted abortion bans imposing severe civil and criminal penalties on clinicians for providing abortion except in very narrow circumstances.

Health and human rights advocates across the United States – including Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) – oppose these bans and the profound harm they cause, to patients and clinicians alike. Read on for a recap of PHR’s work on reproductive justice at the national and international arenas, and a look at how we’re gearing up for the year ahead.

Continued: https://phr.org/our-work/resources/clinicians-to-lawmakers-abortion-bans-in-the-united-states-are-causing-a-health-and-human-rights-crisis/

UN experts say U.S. abortion bans violate human rights

New recommendations call on the U.S. to fully decriminalize abortion

November 17, 2023

The United States is violating human rights by denying legal access to abortion—and should take immediate action to end the criminalization of abortion at the federal, state and local levels. This is the newly released conclusion of the United Nations Human Rights Committee in response to testimony from Ipas and partners in October.

“This is a reckoning for U.S. policymakers at every level of government,” said Bethany Van Kampen Saravia, Ipas senior legal and policy advisor, who attended the October hearing in Geneva. “The UN Human Rights Committee has appropriately called on the U.S. government to acknowledge the human rights crisis that is taking place within America, as states continue to ban abortion and limit access to sexual and reproductive health care.”

Continued: https://www.ipas.org/news/un-experts-say-u-s-abortion-bans-violate-human-rights/

UNHRC asks PH to decriminalize abortion as data show ban ineffective, deadly

By: Cristina Eloisa Baclig
November 07, 2022

MANILA, Philippines—The United Nations Human Rights Committee (UNHRC) called on the Philippine government to decriminalize abortion and improve sexual and reproductive health services such as post-abortion healthcare in the country.

UNHRC, in a recently released concluding observation at its 136th session, said it acknowledged the Philippines’ “efforts to reduce unsafe abortion and maternal mortality.”

Continued: https://newsinfo.inquirer.net/1690191/unhrc-asks-ph-to-decriminalize-abortion-as-data-show-ban-ineffective-deadly

Uganda rejects UN definition of abortion as a human right

Monday, September 26, 2022
By JANE NAFULA

Uganda has joined several other African countries to oppose the contentious United Nations Human Rights Committee’s definition of abortion as a human right.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) defines abortion as termination of pregnancy prior to 20 weeks gestation.

Continued: https://www.monitor.co.ug/uganda/news/national/uganda-rejects-un-definition-of-abortion-as-a-human-right-3962018

Four reasons safe abortion is critical health care

July 20, 2022
International Rescue Committee

No one should be forced to carry a pregnancy to term against their will. The ruling from the United States Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade strips millions of people of the right to control their bodies and to make the decisions that shape their lives, families and futures.

The toll of this decision will fall heaviest
on already-marginalized people, including communities that the International
Rescue Committee (IRC) serves. Experts project that the U.S., which already has
high maternal mortality rates, will only see more people dying due to
restrictions on abortion care.

Continued: https://www.rescue.org/article/four-reasons-safe-abortion-critical-health-care

20.07.2022

Commentary

Featured

International Rescue Committee

maternal mortality

restrictive abortion laws

Roe v. Wade

United Nations Human Rights Committee

Poor Decision-Making: Abortion and American Violations of Human Rights Law

By Chinyere Obasi
July 17, 2022

The most prolific human rights organizations in the United States and abroad value equal and unrestricted access to all maternal care, including abortion, as a human right.

At home, the American Civil Liberties Union has fought for the right to abortion since the 1950s, and Physicians for Human Rights has reaffirmed this stance as recently as May of 2022. Abroad, the Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and the World Health Organization have all argued the same: Access to abortion is a human right. The United Nations Human Rights Committee, the U.N.’s official body designed to advocate for and protect such liberties, wrote in a 2018 statement that “States parties must provide safe, legal and effective access to abortion” when the pregnant person is at risk of harm, physical or otherwise, and that those parties should not take steps toward criminalizing abortion, which would inherently promote unsafe abortion.

Continued: https://harvardpolitics.com/poor-decision-making/

Abortion is essential healthcare and women’s health must be prioritized over politics

International Safe Abortion Day
28 September 2021
United Nations Human Rights, Office of the High Commissioner

On the International Safe Abortion Day, a group of UN experts* stress that abortion is essential health care and a human right. Denial of access to abortion services jeopardizes a person's physical and mental health and takes away their autonomy and agency. It unjustly denies them the freedom to live with dignity and on equal terms with other human beings while exposing them to various forms of violence and oppression.

Furthermore, and as Human Rights bodies have long acknowledged, the denial of abortion services through the criminalization of abortion or through barriers and delays in access to lawful services can in certain circumstances constitute cruel, degrading, and inhumane treatment, may amount to torture and could lead to arbitrary detention.

Continued: https://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=27549&LangID=E

Abortion in Italy, a Right Wronged

Abortion in Italy, a Right Wronged

By ILARIA MARIA SALA
NOV. 13, 2017

Late last month, Cosimo Borraccino, a left-wing member of the regional council for Apulia, in southern Italy, proposed passing a local law to require the enforcement of national legislation granting women access to abortion. His opponents on the council, mostly from center-right parties, said the bill was unnecessary and that Mr. Borraccino was “slamming into a wall of self-evidence.”

Yet when it comes to reproductive rights in Italy, respect of the law is anything but self-evident. In fact, 9 out of 10 gynecologists in Apulia refuse to perform abortions, even though the right to obtain one has been legal since 1978. Nationwide statistics are only slightly less staggering: Seven out of 10 gynecologists in Italy won’t terminate a pregnancy.

Continued at source: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/13/opinion/abortion-italy-conscientious-objectors.html