Vatican will not sign UN treaty on disabled rights
Feb. 1, 2007 (CWNews.com) - The Holy See will not approve a UN treaty on the rights of the disabled, because of “unacceptable” language referring to legalize abortion and gender rights. Archbishop Celestino Migliore, the Vatican’s permanent observer at the UN, has announced that the Vatican cannot accept the terms of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, which won approval by the General Assembly in December. While strong favoring the rights of the disabled, Archbishop Migliore explained, the Vatican cannot assent to the treaty’s treatment of “reproductive rights.” That phrase has frequently been interpreted by UN officials as a call for legal abortion. Vatican delegations have expressed reservations about the use of the term in previous UN documents, notably including the statements issued by the Cairo and Beijing conferences in 1994 and 1995, respectively. Because some countries now consider abortion an intrinsic aspect of “reproductive rights,” the archbishop ...