The Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC) has called upon the Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg to respect the right to life of the child in the womb, reports Assist News.
The Court is currently preparing to hear the case of a woman who claims that Ireland’s ban on abortion is a breach of the European Convention on Human Rights.
The woman, identified as woman D, claims her human rights were violated when she was forced to travel to Britain for an abortion after discovering she was pregnant with a seriously disabled child.
The call by the SPUC comes after the president of the Court granted the charity permission to make a late intervention. The SPUC has presented a submission setting out the recognition of the rights of the unborn child in international law, including the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
Ireland ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1992, which states that 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.”
The Court of Human Rights in a ruling last year found that the embryo belonged to the human race.
Lawyers for SPUC hope that the submission will convince the Court that this ruling on the human embryo will be enough to prove the embryo as deserving of human rights.
