Chapters 1 and 2 provide the historical context indispensable for showing that the authors of the 1948 UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) clearly recognized that the unborn child, like all other innocent human beings, has an inalienable right to life.  Chapter 3 focuses on the “fundamentals” of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948 to show that the Declaration is grounded in the incomparable dignity of the human person, which in turn is rooted in basic natural law principles. Because these chapters underpin the arguments set forth in subsequent chapters, a detailed presentation of their contents is needed.

Chapter 1 (pp. 1-6)
This chapter analyzes the UN 1959 Declaration on the Rights of the Child (DRC), in particular its Preamble, whose third paragraph explicitly affirms the unborn child’s inalienable right to life: “Whereas the child, by reason of his physical and mental immaturity, needs special safeguards and care, including appropriate legal protection, before as well as after birth” (emphasis added). To appreciate fully the significance of this paragraph we must read it within the context of the Preamble’s second paragraph: “Whereas the United Nations has, in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, proclaimed that everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth therein, without distinction of any kind, such as race, color, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth, or other status.” From this we can see that paragraph three particularizes the scope of the DRC to the special case of the child “before and after birth,” eliminating possible ambiguity over applying the UDHR’s provisions to the unborn child.

The Preamble’s fourth paragraph, Joseph says, offers

incontrovertible historical proof that the UDHR “recognized” that the child before birth, no less than the child after birth, is an appropriate subject of human rights law and is entitled to appropriate legal protection. It declared: ‘Whereas the need for such special safeguards [i.e., those mentioned in paragraph 3; emphasis added] has been stated in the Geneva Declaration of the Rights of the Child of 1924, and recognized in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and in the statutes of specialized agencies and international organizations concerned with the welfare of children.” Insertion of the word “such” here and repetition of the words “special safeguards” makes the essential continuity of these two clauses [paragraphs 3 and 4] unmistakably clear…[The] whole international community agreed and understood that the UDHR had for the first decade of its jurisdiction recognized the legal status of the child before birth as a juridical personality entitled to legal protection. This is the evident sense of the UDHR, the very foundation instrument of modern international human rights law (pp. 2- 3).

Chapter 2 (pp. 7-30)
This chapter summarizes the historical context showing that at the time the UDHR was written in 1948 the civilized world clearly recognized the right of the unborn human baby to be born and to enjoy appropriate legal and moral protection. Joseph cites and comments on over 15 documents to illustrate this. Some documents, written before the 1947 UDHR, reflect the lengthy common law tradition protecting the child before birth, pre-eminently the ancient Hippocratic Oath and the 1924 Geneva Declaration of the Rights of the Child. Other sources immediately preceded the UDHR; among these are the British Medical Association’s June 1947 reaffirmation of the Hippocatic Oath in a submission to the World Medical Association; textbooks on human embryology in the late 1940s affirming that the human embryo is a new human being and that the end of the process of fertilization marks the beginning of a new human life; popular books such as Dr. Benjamin Spock’s immensely popular and influential Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care; the affirmation by Eleanor Roosevelt, later the Chairwoman of the Drafting Committee of the UDHR, that “women bear the children, and love them even before they come into the world.”

Joseph then cites from and analyzes documents and other materials from 1947 through 1969 to establish her thesis. Among these are: The Nuremberg Trials and Tribunals 1947, along with testimony from medical authorities and Charles Malik’s contributions to the final UN General Assembly debate on the UDHR expressing opposition “to the barbarous doctrines of Nazism and Fascism”; the First Draft of the International Covenant on Human Rights 1947; the Fourth Geneva Convention 1949; Draft [Latin] American Declaration of the International Rights and Duties of Man 1948; World Medical Association 1948 Geneva Declaration; [Latin] American Declaration of International Rights and Duties of Man, also known as the Bogotá Declaration of 1948; International Code of Medical Ethics, 1949; UN Declaration of Rights of the Child 1959; International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights 1966 etc. (pp. 7-30).

Chapter 3 (pp. 31-45)
This chapter considers “Fundamentals of the Universal Declaration’s Human Rights Protection.”  Joseph reaffirms that the Declaration recognizes the rights of the child before birth, emphasizes that it specifies rights recognized in the Charter of the UN and derives its binding power from the legal standing of that Charter. Experts on international law (e.g., Hersch Lauterpacht of Cambridge University) agree that UN members are legally obliged to act in accord with the Charter. Joseph stresses (1) that the 1959 Declaration on the Rights of the Child is of immense importance for explicitly affirming the unborn child’s right to life and to appropriate legal protection, (2) that human rights are essentially inalienable and timeless, (3) that they are clarified by the Holocaust experience, and (4) that they allow no one to be excluded. She refers to the testimony Drs. Leo Alexander and Andrew Ivy gave at the Nuremberg Trials to show how Nazi doctors violated these rights, ushering in a relativistic ethic that can threaten medical ethics.

A most important section shows how the dignity of the human person, as a being of moral worth surpassing in value other forms of life, is at the heart of the UDHR. The dignity of the human person itself is a major principle of the natural law as demonstrated by such major figures influential in the articulation of the UDHR as Charles Malik of Lebanon, Field Marshal Smuts, Eleanor Roosevelt and others. Referring to John Finnis’ Natural Law and Natural Right, Joseph emphasizes how he showed that the right to life of innocent persons, including the unborn, is rooted in the fundamental natural law principle that the basic aspects of human good are never to be directly (i.e. intentionally) suppressed, a principle providing the rational basis for absolute human rights that prevail always and on every occasion, even against the most specific human, i.e., man-made (as by Hitler) enactments and commands. Procured abortion violates a basic human right and efforts to dehumanize unborn children and others by a dehumanizing use of language violate the principles of the natural law and of the UDHR (pp. 31-45).

Chapters 4-14
In subsequent chapters Joseph uses the evidence and arguments marshaled in Chapters 1-3, along with further evidence and arguments, to show how specious are later ideologically driven efforts to “re-interpret” the founding documents of the UN in order to dehumanize unborn children, rob them of their right to be born, and decriminalize abortion, elevating it to the rank of a basic right of women. I offer shorter summaries of these chapters, some of them (e.g., Chapter 11) quite complex in structure.

Chapter 4 (pp.47-62) takes up “The Inaugural Human Right—To Be Born Free and Equal.”
Joseph emphasizes that this right is an endowment that accompanies the child’s coming into being, and is not dependent on his/her being born nor is it conferred by others. She surveys and criticizes contemporary ideological attempts (e.g. militant feminism) to re-interpret the UDHR and similar documents. Chapter 5 (pp. 63-80), “What Is Appropriate Legal Protection Before As Well As After Birth?” takes this matter up in detail. Basically, appropriate legal protection means punishing abortion by law. Joseph surveys and criticizes efforts to deny the unborn child a legally recognized personality, to decriminalize abortion, and in other ways to rob the unborn of the legal protection due them. Chapter 6 (pp.81-102), “The Right to Life and the Necessities of Life,” argues that the right to life embraces the right of all human beings to physical existence and to physical integrity from the moment of conception, the right of the mother of the unborn to necessities of life, to liberty and the security of the person, and protects persons against cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment and punishment, and repudiates abortion, deeming it part of the science of death (termed “ktenology” by Leo Alexander in his condemnation of Nazi medicine), a science including the use of pre-natal testing in order to abort “defective” children.

Chapter 7 (pp. 103-120) considers “Decriminalization—A Treaty Interpretation Manifestly Unreasonable” and devastates efforts to reinterpret key UN Documents from 1948 (UDHR) and 1959 (DRC). Joseph begins by reaffirming that UDHR recognized the unborn child as a person with an inalienable right to life and emphasizes that International Covenants had been enacted in accordance with the UDHR. Ideologically driven efforts to dehumanize the unborn, to decriminalize abortion, and to rob the unborn of “appropriate legal protection” are shown to be “unreasonable.” Joseph considers many of these efforts in detail in order to show the mental gymnastics and linguistic distortions used to “re-interpret” the basic documents and make them conform to a relativistic ethic.

Chapter 8 (pp. 121-140), “CRC [Convention on the Rights of the Child 1989] Legislative History and the Child Before Birth,” focuses on the publication in 2007 of Legislative History on the Convention on the Rights of the Child issued by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. Joseph shows that this UN publication, issued by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, “provides support of the Convention’s recognition of the human rights of unborn child and States parties’ obligation to protect them” (p.121). She demolishes the claim, made by Adam Lopatka in his Introduction to the Legislative History, that although the 1989 CRD is a legally binding document, the obligations it imposes on States do not extend to the child before birth because these rights are mentioned “only in the preamble” to the document. His argument, however, contradicts Article 31, General rule of interpretation of the 1969 Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties. Joseph shows this early in the chapter. In its remaining pages she reviews the long tradition demanding protection of the human rights of the unborn, its right to pre-natal care, the incompatibility of this right with abortion, the spurious efforts to establish abortion as a fundamental right of women, etc, and concludes by showing how the historical context invalidates Lopatka’s claim.

Chapter 9 (pp. 141-178), “Selective Abortion on the Grounds of Disability,” reviews and rebuts efforts to justify the abortion of unborn children deemed disabled, showing how such efforts are incompatible with the Nuremberg Trials, testimony given there, and a myriad of conventions and declarations on the rights of the child as previous chapters had shown and how testimonies given by many highly regarded authorities likewise make crystal clear.

Joseph opens Chapter 10 (pp.179-212), “European Convention (1950) and the Unborn Child,” by declaring: “The historical background to the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (1950) reveals that a broad consensus for including the child before birth in human rights protection was operating universally and without controversy at that time” (p. 179). Despite this, the European Court of Human Rights in 2007 denied that the Convention mandated protection of the unborn child’s right to life, deeming it merely a “potential” and not actual person. Joseph reviews the vigorously presented dissents elicited by this decision, summarizes evidence regarding the consensus in the 1940s and 50s that the unborn are persons whose right to life must be protected, and shows how spurious are claims that the UDHR as a “living document” is subject to reinterpretation and other claims of this kind.

Chapter 11 (pp. 213-244), “American [Latin American] Convention on Human Rights ‘…in general from the moment of conception’” is complex because of the history with which it is concerned—principally the grossly erroneous misrepresentation of prior Latin American declarations and conventions given by the majority Commissioners in the 1981 Baby Boy Resolution and the nefarious influence of this Resolution on post 1981 American declarations and conventions on human rights.

That Resolution and subsequent human rights documents robbed the unborn of protections guaranteed “from the very first draft (1947) of the human rights principles that comprise the [Latin] American Declaration on the Rights and Duties of Man (1948) to their final codification in the American Convention on Human Rights (ACHR) (1969),” documents consistently recognizing “that unborn children were included in the human rights protections being drawn up.”  Joseph offers devastating criticism of ideologically inspired efforts to deny these rights to unborn children, giving special attention to the Baby Boy Resolution because of the mischief wrought by the position taken by the “majority Commissioners” who were party to this Resolution. They grossly misrepresented the meaning of “…in general from the moment of conception.” This phrase had appeared in the [Latin] American Convention on Human Rights of 1969. However, as illustrated  by the vehement dissent to the “majority” position voiced by Drs. Marco Gerardo Monroy Cabra and Luis Demetrio Tinoco Castro, themselves participants in the 1981 Baby Boy Resolution, and relevant historical documents of that time, Joseph shows that the 1969 document in no way sought to deny unborn children legal protection of their right to life. The expression “in general” was used in order to be as concise as possible--at that time there was a consensus of all UN members that unborn children’s right to life merits protection; moreover, as Dr. Castro put the matter, at key meetings on abortion and human rights in Latin American countries, “the concept, not discussed or put in doubt by anyone, that every person has the right to life, including those yet unborn, as well as incurables, imbeciles, and the insane was implicitly maintained.” Castro’s point is corroborated by important studies regarding abortion legislation in Latin American countries by scholars like Mary Ann Glendon and Mala Htun and also by relevant documents tracing the history of discussion of human rights in those lands.

The full relevant text of the 1981 Resolution reads: “…the legal implications of the clause ‘in general, from the moment of conception’ are substantially (emphasis added) different from the shorter phrase ‘from the moment of conception’…”  But the “majority Commissioners” interpreted this phrase as being not “substantially different” but “totally different” (emphasis added). The majority Commissioners’ mistake, Joseph points out, is critical “since it has been used in subsequent legal disputes to deny the right to life of every child from the moment of conception.”

Chapter 12 (pp. 245-264) is concerned with “Reclaiming Rights of the African Child at Risk of Abortion.” Joseph gives a splendid critique and rebuttal of the 2003 African Charter on Human and People’s Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa. First of all, it directly contradicts a basic principle of modern human rights laws as well as several African regional human rights declarations and charters, e.g., Declaration of the Rights and Welfare of the African Child 1979, African Charter on Human and People’s Rights 1981, and African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child 1990. Secondly, abortion language, Joseph shows, is incompatible with African values, contradicts and does not “supplement” African charters, and compounds an abused woman’s tragedy.

In Chapter 13 (pp. 265-281) Joseph shows that “Selective Abortion [Is] An Act of Violence and Discrimination on Grounds of Sex.” She notes that the 1995 Fourth UN Conference on Woman in Beijing included “prenatal sex selection” among “acts of violence against women” and its resolution’s last paragraph included a condemnation of abortion of unborn children because they are female, despite efforts of pro-abortion advocates to restrict condemnation to “pre-natal sex selection.” But in 2000, at a meeting in New York, pro-abortionists “resisted all our [Joseph herself was a participant in the meeting] efforts to review how governments were performing on their Beijing promise to enact and enforce legislation to eliminate the violent act of pre-natal sex selection resulting in abortions. The UN Secretariat and Chair just drew a blanket of silence over the Beijing commitment.”  This silence continued until the 2007 meeting when pro-abortion ideologues rejected a resolution condemning sex-selective abortion and thus repudiated protections of unborn girls demanded by the 2005 UN Committee on the Rights of the Child. All this shows how serious logical inconsistencies prevail, so long as ideology triumphs over truth. Prenatal sex selection threatens to expose the weakness of abortion arguments, all of which are spurious and seek to substitute the will of the mother for biological and natural laws.

The basic purpose of Chapter 14 (pp. 284-300) “Children’s Rights’…without any exceptions whatsoever’” is to reaffirm that the absolute moral norm protecting the inviolability of the lives of innocent human beings by prohibiting their intentional killing fully applies to children before birth in face of the legalizing of abortion of children conceived as a result of rape and/or incest.

Aborting the unborn for any reason whatsoever arbitrarily discriminates against some unborn children, shifts punishment from those guilty of violence and performs another act of violence (the lethal punishment of the innocent), and does not restore their mothers’ health. Abortion for rape or incest facilitates the spread of the radical feminist view that an “unwanted” pregnancy is a “forced pregnancy” and that therefore the unwanted product of conception can be eliminated. Aborting children conceived after rape or incest ignores totally the healing power of the little child, who although conceived as a result of violence can give his mother love which she can also give to him. The proper response to rape and incest is not abortion but proper pre and post natal care for the mother.

In her Conclusion (pp. 301-329) Joseph develops the truth that “Ideologies Must Conform to Human Rights—Not Human Rights to Ideologies” and shows how the feminist revolution and abortion have turned the (alleged) oppressed into the oppressor, how the ideology underlying such feminism has hijacked human rights, and how specious is the reasoning employed over the past 25 or so years to reinterpret radically the basic human rights recognized as worthy of protection when the founding documents of the UN were prepared.
 
This is truly a most important work.

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 [1] Rita Joseph has represented family concerns at UN conferences, and writes and lectures on social issues especially concerning women and families, and has made a special study of the Holy Father's writings on family and on women. A lecturer at the John Paul II Institute for Marriage and Family Studies in Melbourne, she and her husband Gerard live in Canberra, Australia, and are the parents of eleven children. She has contributed many essays on human rights and UN documents for Voices, the journal of Women for Faith & Family.

(c) 2009 Culture of Life Foundation.  Reproduction granted with attribution required.