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Live Action president Lila Rose to UN: ‘Abortion is a contradiction of every human right’

Live Action president and founder Lila Rose joined the United Nations Transatlantic Summit on Friday to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR).

“When the member states of the United Nations adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, the world was reeling,” said Rose. “We were three years removed from the liberation of the Nazi death camps in 1945, where the horrors of the evils committed against the Jewish people and political dissidents emerged, and the world would never be the same. Their human rights were violated. They were enslaved, their bodies used for labor or human experimentation at the whim of their captors. They were cruelly tortured and degraded as if they were less than animals. They were murdered.”

Killing on an industrial scale

Rose noted the UDHR was not written as “an academic exercise,” but rather “a robust response to some of the greatest atrocities and most severe and systematic human rights abuses perpetrated in modern history.” World War I led to more than 20 million deaths. World War II led to more than 40 million, including six million Jewish individuals killed by Nazis. Then, said Rose, millions more killings were carried out under the leadership of Josef Stalin and then Mao Zedong.

This, noted Rose, was “[k]illing on an industrial scale.”

Today, killing on an industrial scale continues around the world and even in the United States, through abortion, because as the Nazis did not see the humanity of Jewish persons, much of society ignores the humanity of preborn persons.

“Many powerful people today argue that a human in the womb is not a human, not a life, not worthy of the basic human rights enumerated in the Declaration,” said Rose. “Instead, they argue that one must pass through the magical birth canal in order to receive one’s humanity. How ludicrous.”

Life, she explained, does not begin at birth but at fertilization, as has been proven by scientific research. Preborn humans — embryos, fetuses — are human beings and therefore persons.

The Declaration that all have the right to life

Rose explained, “From Article 3 of the Declaration, ‘Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person’. From Article 6, ‘Everyone has the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law’. From Article 7, ‘All are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to equal protection of the law.'”

She continued, “The Declaration’s preamble states that the rights enumerated are for ‘all members of the human family.’ It states: recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world.”

So if there are indeed human rights for all, including the right to life, why are tens of millions of human children being killed each year simply because of their location — in their mother’s womb?

“Here’s the hard truth: every year, globally, seventy million children are slaughtered by abortion. Abortion is, by far, the worst human rights crisis of the last half century, one that is ongoing, and one that few today even acknowledge,” said Rose. “In fact, most of the members of this great institution that is the United Nations outright support and justify this human rights abuse.”

Speaking up for the preborn

Because the victims of abortion have no means to speak up for themselves, they require those who have already been born to speak for them.

“They cannot rally, they cannot vote, they cannot demonstrate,” said Rose. “… They are babies — growing in the wombs of their mothers — the womb, which should be a safe haven, a place of nourishment and love, has become a war zone.”

There is no right to kill

Rose continued, “It’s because the unborn cannot speak, that the born — the powerful — have succeeded in trampling on their rights.”

She added: “What are the euphemisms used in polite society that cloak the brutal reality of abortion? Even the word ‘abortion’ sanitizes a brutal, unnatural act that kills a human being. ‘Reproductive healthcare’. ‘Women’s rights’. ‘The right to choose’. ‘Bodily autonomy’. Healthcare does not include the right to harm a child — that is ludicrous.

“Women’s rights do not include the right to kill a little girl in the womb — that is ludicrous. The ‘Right to Choose’ does not include the right to ‘choose’ to murder a child — that is ludicrous. My bodily autonomy does not include the right to destroy another person’s body! That is ludicrous! How have we bought so many ludicrous lies?”

The Declaration against inhuman treatment

Rose noted that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights also states, “No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms” and “No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.”

Yet abortion is fully supported by the United Nations despite it violating all of these rights.

“Abortion not only violates the unborn child’s right to life,” said Rose. “Abortion also violates the child’s right to be free from slavery and their right to be free from torture.”

Abortion allows born humans to treat preborn humans as property, as commodities that can be created and killed at will. They are made in a lab for research and experimentation, and their body parts are sold.

Abortion itself is an act of torture in which “children are routinely subjected to the worst acts of violence imaginable,” said Rose. A Dilation and Evacuation (D&E) or dismemberment abortion is the most common abortion procedure used in the second trimester committed on babies from 14 weeks through 22 weeks. Rose explained:

In a D&E, the abortionist inserts a large suction catheter into the uterus and turns it on, emptying the amniotic fluid. After the amniotic fluid is removed, the abortionist uses a sopher clamp — a grasping instrument with rows of sharp “teeth” — to grasp and pull the living baby’s arms and legs, one by one ripping the limbs from the child’s body. The abortionist continues to grasp the baby’s intestines, spine, heart, lungs, and any other limbs or body parts. The most difficult part of the procedure for the abortionist is usually finding, grasping and crushing the baby’s head. After removing pieces of the child’s skull, the abortionist uses a curette to scrape the uterus and remove the placenta and any remaining parts of the baby.

The abortionist then collects all of the baby’s parts and reassembles them to make sure there are two arms, two legs, and that all of the pieces have been removed.

Many abortions are not just killing: a D&E abortion is excruciating, torturous killing. 

Rose remarked that if the human rights of the Universal Declaration do not apply to human beings in the womb then they do not apply to anyone. She called on the UN to address abortion as a human rights abuse and to set a resolution to end it.

She proclaimed, “Abortion, at its core, is a contradiction of every human right.”

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