Tag Archives: ZZ: Murillo v. Costa Rica

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

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.”

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.”