UN Special Rapporteur Calls for Access to Legal Abortions

2011 has been a difficult year for pro-choice advocates in the United States. At the Federal level, partisan sparring over Government funding directly threatened national assistance to Planned Parenthood.  Now the Republican-led Energy and Commerce Committee has launched a full-scale investigation into that organization’s accounts and practices.

On Thursday, the House was set to vote on HR 358, the Protect Life Act, a bill that would prohibit federal funding of any health care plan covering abortion services. The bill would also prevent Government money from being withheld from pro-life organizations.

At the State level too, there have been numerous set-backs. Laws requiring mandatory sonograms, have been introduced in Texas and North Carolina. The Oklahoma legislature has passed a law mandating that abortion-inducing drugs be administered in a manner contrary to the advice of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. Residents of Mississippi are set to vote on whether ‘personhood’ should be recognized at the point of fertilization. All this, nearly forty years after Roe v Wade, means that the promise of that Supreme Court decision remains, for a large proportion of American women, scarcely recognized.

This week, the United Nations Special Mandate Holders began submitting their reports to the Third Committee of the General Assembly in New York City. Over the next three weeks, the Committee Chairs, Special Rapporteurs and Independent Experts will address the members on issues ranging from Extra-Judicial Killings to the right to Safe Drinking Water and Sanitation. On 24th October, the Special Rapporteur for physical and mental health, Anand Grover, will present his findings. While Mr. Grover’s report addresses the broad question of sexual and reproductive rights, it focuses particularly on abortion and the harmful consequences that can follow when access is restricted. The report is particularly interesting, coming as it does when the future of abortion in this country has suddenly become so uncertain.

Mr. Grover writes that “criminal laws penalizing and restricting induced abortion are the paradigmatic examples of impermissible barriers to the realization of women’s right to health and must be eliminated.” His report makes two claims that have direct relevance for the abortion debate in America.

First, Mr. Grover notes that legal restrictions, in the same way as outright prohibitions, serve to make abortion inaccessible for many women. Among the restrictions which the Special Rapporteur suggests make abortion de facto ‘unavailable’ are prohibitions on public funding, mandatory waiting periods and requirements for counseling. This claim is an obvious attempt to rebut those in the pro-life movement who suggest that incremental encroachment on abortion rights do not, in and of themselves, render those rights null and void.

Second, Mr. Grover states that while the “psychological impact of seeking an illegal abortion or carrying an unwanted pregnancy to term is well documented, no corresponding evidence supports the existence of long-term mental health [problems] resulting from elective abortions.” This is perhaps a thinly veiled critique of Justice Kennedy’s statement in Carhart v Gonzalez that while “no reliable data to measure the phenomenon” existed, a majority of the Supreme Court found it “unexceptional” that “severe depression and loss of esteem can follow” where a woman chooses to have an abortion. The message from Mr. Grover appears to be that where no evidence exists to support a point or worst, where there is contrary evidence, judges and politicians should not make decisions based solely on their own personal opinions.