STOP AN INTERNATIONAL ROE v. WADE/ PROTECT NATIONAL SOVEREIGNTY

Biden’s nominee to the International Court of Justice, the world’s most powerful court, is a pro-abortion globalist and a judicial activist. If appointed she will be a threat to sovereignty, democracy, and self-government in every country in the world. 

While serving on the UN Human Rights Committee, American law professor Sarah Cleveland tried to impose new human rights that were never contemplated by Sovereign nations, including on abortion and transgender issues. 

Cleveland believes international treaties are living instruments and that international experts can manufacture new human rights obligations regardless of what sovereign nations decide. These international obligations would trump any decision by the U.S. Supreme Court or any national court anywhere in the world.

Cleveland was rewarded for her activism by President Joseph Biden with a nomination to be the top lawyer at the U.S. State Department.  This was blocked in the United States Senate precisely because of concerns over her judicial activism and her globalist views.

Now, Cleveland has been nominated to serve a ten-year term as a judge on the top court in the world, where she will be free to advance her anti-sovereignty, pro-abortion, anti-family agenda. If appointed, her decisions will reach far beyond the International Court of Justice. Domestic courts and activists all over the world will cite them as binding jurisprudence.

For these reasons, the undersigned groups from around the world oppose the nomination of Sarah Cleveland to the International Court of Justice and ask UN Member States to do the same.

BACKGROUND INFORMATION:

Below are some of the controversial opinions voiced by Sarah Cleveland that led the U.S. Senate to scuttle her nomination to the top legal advisor at the U.S. State Department (https://c-fam.org/friday_fax/republicans-block-bidens-legal-nominee-over-abortion-extremism/). 

In her capacity as a member of the Human Rights Committee from 2015 to 2018, Cleveland abused her position as a human rights expert to promote controversial social policies as if they were international human rights, including abortion, homosexual marriage and transgenderism. These notions are not mentioned anywhere in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Cleveland directly pressured countries to repeal protections for the unborn in their national laws through the work of the committee. She also attacked countries with pro-family laws and policies in media statements.

• Cleveland’s committee told Cameroon that it had an obligation for “guaranteeing effective access to safe, legal abortions” in 2017 (CCPR/C/CMR/CO/5).
• The Committee told Honduras to “ensure access to safe, legal abortions” and that it must “lift the ban on the emergency contraceptive pill” the same year (CCPR/C/HND/CO/2).
• It told Pakistan and Mauritius that they could not regulate, under any circumstance, “any pregnancy or abortion in a manner that runs contrary to its obligation to ensure that women and girls need not resort to unsafe abortions; it will have to amend its legislation accordingly” in that year.
• In 2017, Cleveland’s last year on the committee, the committee began to tell every country that they had an obligation to “ensure that the equality of same-sex couples and the identity of transgender persons are fully recognized.”
• Cleveland went above and beyond to pressure Ireland to change its laws, by appearing before the media in press events designed to shame Ireland as guilty of “inhumane and degrading treatment” because of its laws prohibiting abortion.

Cleveland was also leading proponent of declaring access to abortion a part of the “right to life” in General Comment 36 (CCPR/C/GC/36, paragraph 8).

“…States parties must provide safe, legal and effective access to abortion where the life and health of the pregnant woman or girl is at risk, or where carrying a pregnancy to term would cause the pregnant woman or girl substantial pain or suffering, most notably where the pregnancy is the result of rape or incest or where the pregnancy is not viable…”

The same General Comment also undermines conscience rights for medical providers who object to abortion.

“…States parties should remove existing barriers to effective access by women and girls to safe and legal abortion, including barriers caused as a result of the exercise of conscientious objection by individual medical providers, and should not introduce new barriers…”

These notions were never accepted by UN Member States. The travaux preparatoir of the treaty show that UN member states rejected an international right to abortion repeatedly and the international Covenant on Civil and Political Rights makes no mention of “reproductive health” or “abortion” and even prohibits carrying out a sentence of death on pregnant women until the unborn child is born, thereby implying the right to life for unborn children.

After leaving the Human Rights Committee, Cleveland published an article arguing that religious freedom and freedom of conscience are inferior and subordinate to reproductive rights and LGBT rights. She urged the Biden administration to limit religious freedom and coerce Catholics in the United States to pay for abortion and contraception (Sarah H. Cleveland, A Human Rights Agenda for the Biden Administration, 115 AJIL UNBOUND 57 (2021)).

This is especially problematic since the ICJ is already weighing conflicts between how UN Member States’ understanding of human rights differs from that of human rights treaty bodies and UN agencies, both working to establish a right to abortion. Cleveland can be relied upon to always side with UN human rights bodies and agencies in any dispute about human rights.

Cleveland may engage in unprofessional and untoward behavior towards colleagues with dissenting opinions.

During the elaboration of General Comment 36 Cleveland viciously attacked committee members who disagreed with unrestricted access to abortion as an international right during internal debates. She accused Egyptian Ambassador Ahmed Amin Fathalla, a well-known international legal expert and chairman of the committee at the time, saying that he had “egregiously abused the spirit of this conversation and the position of chair” for expressing views that abortion-on-demand is not an international human right. (https://c-fam.org/friday_fax/biden-nominates-pro-abortion-globalist-to-international-court/)