Three Irish women who have lodged a complaint against Ireland to the UN on the grounds that they were unable to abort their fatally handicapped babies in Ireland are being helped by one of America’s leading pro-abortion groups, the Center for Reproductive Rights (CRR).

The CRR has a history of promoting abortion internationally. It has a multi-million dollar budget, and recently opened a special Latin America office whose mandate would be “to build a more powerful and transnational reproductive rights movement”.

The organisation favours ultra-liberal abortion laws. It is opposed to ban on ‘partial-birth’ abortions and sex selective abortions.

In December 2011, Nancy Northup, President of the Center for Reproductive Rights, attacked proposed legislation in the US to ban sex-selective abortion, calling it a “trumped up bill for a trumped up problem”.

In 2006, the group were involved in legal action attempting to overturn the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act in the US.

The three women in the Irish action are members of the Terminations for Medical Reasons (TFMR) group. They travelled to the UK and had their pregnancies terminated there after their children were diagnosed with fatal abnormalities.

The CRR is to file papers with the UN’s Human Rights Committee, claiming that the women involved were subjected to “cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment” because they were unable to obtain abortions in Ireland, the Irish Times reports.
 
The committee will then require the State to respond to the admissibility of the cases and the allegations.

After lengthy consideration, which could take as long as four years, the Committee will deliver its opinion as to whether the continued ban on abortion in cases of fatal foetal abnormality amounts to a violation of women’s human rights.

Ireland is not bound by any finding of the Committee.

The TFMR group has since met with TDs and Senators and has been campaigning to have abortion legalised for women in these circumstances. The women say this is the next step in their campaign to change the law.

TDs and Senators have also met representatives of One Day More, an organisation consisting of women who have brought their fatally handicapped babies to full-term.