Tag Archives: Court: Inter-American Court of Human Rights

C-FAM: Lawyers and doctors last week denounced the highest human rights court in the Americas for meddling with science and failing to protect human life. Last December, the Inter-American Court for Human Rights struck down a Costa Rican ban on in-vitro fertilization, known as IVF. In order to rule that way the court had to weigh in on the law and science of when human life begins. It decided the IVF ban infringed the right to privacy, personal autonomy and sexual and reproductive health.

Buzz Feed: Denying same-sex couples the right to marry is unconstitutionally discriminatory, Mexico’s Supreme Court announced in a sweeping ruling made public Monday. The ruling not only makes a strong statement about Mexican law’s treatment of equal protection guarantees, it also relies heavily on civil rights rulings handed down by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Manila Standard Today: Piero Tozzi of Alliance Defending Freedom complained that the ruling turned the right to life on its head and subordinated it to so many other secondary rights.

BioNews: Piero Tozzi, legal counsel with the Alliance Defending Freedom, an organisation of Christian leaders, said: ‘A preliminary reading of the ruling indicates that the Court elevated secondary rights-such as the right to privacy, a right to personal autonomy, and a right to sexual and reproductive health-above the right to life, which by necessity takes precedence over all the other rights’.

Piero A. Tozzi at C-FAM: Late last week the Inter-American Court on Human Rights struck down a Costa Rican law that banned in vitro fertilization, ruling that the restrictions violated rights to privacy, personal autonomy and “sexual and reproductive health” under the American Convention on Human Rights (ACHR), commonly known as the Pact of San José. The Court further ruled that that a human embryo lacks the legal status of “person.” The 5-1 decision, Murillo v. Costa Rica . . . | also posted at LifeSiteNews

Austin Ruse at The Catholic Thing: Last week the court struck down a Costa Rican law that banned in vitro fertilization. Piero Tozzi of Alliance Defending Freedom explains that the court ruled such “restrictions violated rights to privacy, personal autonomy, and ‘sexual and reproductive health’ under the American Convention on Human Rights (ACHR), commonly knows as the Pact of San José.” He says the Court also “ruled that a human embryo lacks the legal status of a ‘person,’” and that life begins not at conception, but at implantation – even though the ACHR is the only international treaty that explicitly protects the right to life “from conception.”

Piero Tozzi reports at Turtle Bay and Beyond: Late yesterday the Inter-American Court of Human Rights released a lengthy opinion (Murillo et al. v. Costa Rica, dated November 28, 2012) holding that Costa Rica’s law which protects life at its earliest stages by prohibiting in vitro fertilization violates the American Convention on Human Life. In so doing, the Court turned the Convention, which protects the right to life “from conception,” on its head.. . . Alliance Defending Freedom, C-FAM and Americans United for Life submitted a brief to the Court on article 4 of the American Convention, which is the article containing protection of life “from conception.”

AP: Chile’s government has apologized to a lesbian judge who was denied custody of her three daughters because she is gay.

Nature.com: The Inter-American Court of Human Rights is set to decide whether Costa Rica, the only country that completely prohibits in vitro fertilization (IVF), has infringed basic rights with its ban. The tribunal — which is based in the Costa Rican capital of San José but rules on human-rights violations throughout Central and South America — met last week to hear a case brought by affected couples against Costa Rica.

Santiago Times: Chile’s Movement for Homosexual Integration and Liberation (Movilh) announced its lawsuit Monday against the Chilean state over the prohibition of same sex marriages in the country. The lawsuit, which Movilh says is the first of its kind, was presented to the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights.

InsideCostaRica: According to Alliance Defense Fund Senior Legal Counsel Piero Tozzi, ADF pointed out that Costa Rica was acting within its sovereign capacity in outlawing the procedure, which almost always results in the destruction of “spare” human lives at the embryonic stage of development. ADF argued that the Court should grant Costa Rica a “margin of appreciation,” whereby it may decide the best way to protect the life of a developing human being, and that the Court should not exceed its authority by intruding upon an area that is solely within the competence of Costa Rica. “No one should try to usurp the sovereign right of a nation to determine the best way to protect life. The court should not exceed its authority by intruding upon an area of domestic policy that is solely Costa Rica’s to decide,” he said.

“No one should usurp the sovereign right of a nation to determine the best way to protect life. Costa Rica protects preborn life ‘from conception.’ The Inter-American system must not intrude upon an area of domestic policy that is solely Costa Rica’s to decide.”

AP report.