WASHINGTON, DC— Americans United for Life joined a friend-of-the-court brief filed Monday in the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in San Jose, Costa Rica, against a coalition of abortion-rights groups that are demanding that the international body force El Salvador to abandon its duty to prosecute infanticide.
In re Manuela is a lawsuit filed against El Salvador by the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights on behalf of U.S.-based and local pro-abortion organizations, including the Center for Reproductive Rights and its main affiliates in El Salvador, both of which receive funding from the United Kingdom-based International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF). For years, these organizations have litigated for impunity for infanticide while demanding legalization of abortion in El Salvador. Their legal and media campaigns charge that women who perpetrate infanticide, not their children, are the real “victims” of human rights violations. Newborn babies who could have been safely delivered and placed with adoptive families are called “fetuses” and their deaths presented as “spontaneous abortions” or “ obstetric emergencies,” despite overwhelming forensic and medical evidence proving infanticide.
AUL joined 27 other international and American non-governmental organizations in expressing deep concern that the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) would ask the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR) to order El Salvador to carry out criminal law “reforms” that would tie its hands from investigating and prosecuting violent crimes against newborn infants in the name of “abortion access.” The brief, authored by Ave Maria law professor Ligia De Jesus Castaldi, argues that El Salvador’s ban on infanticide not only does not violate, but is required by international human rights law, including the American Convention of Human Rights.
AUL President and CEO Catherine Glenn Foster said:
We call on the Inter-American Court to affirm that member states have the inherent authority to protect their most vulnerable citizens from horrific abuse and murder, and that doing so has nothing to do with a so-called ‘right to abortion’ that multinational NGOs like International Planned Parenthood have been trying to impose on pro-life nations for years. Latin America is nearly unanimous in rejecting this kind of ‘abortion colonialism’ that fails to respect its nations’ deep-seated and enduring commitment to affirming the value of all human life at every stage.
Americans United for Life (AUL) is a nonprofit, public-interest law and policy organization that holds the distinction of being the first national pro-life organization in America—incorporated in 1971. It protects and defends human life from conception to natural death through vigorous legislative, judicial, and educational efforts.
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