Paul Keenan
Rights group makes submission to Rapporteur
The United Nations’Special Rapporteur on Torture has been urged to investigate late term abortions as a form of torture by a human rights group.
In a submission to the Rapporteur, Juan E. Méndez the European Centre for Law and Justice (ECLJ) called for a full examination of methods employed in such terminations and singled out Canada and Britain for special attention, given latest figures on late term terminations and the numbers of children born alive and left to die during such procedures.
Basing its submission on scientific findings that foetuses and premature children can feel pain, with that capacity evident from at least week 20 of gestation, the ECLJ contends that later term abortions should therefore fall into the category of torture.
“According to official statistics, between 2000 and 2011 in Canada, 622 babies were born alive and left to die after an abortion,” the ECLJ said in a statement announcing its submission. “There were 66 in 2005 in the United Kingdom, where no statistics were published on this issue in the following years.”
Referencing the extreme methods employed to perform a late term abortion, the ECLJ contends that these should be outlawed.
“Some methods of abortion, especially dilatation and evacuation, should be banned because of the inhumane suffering they cause for the foetus,” the group stated.
