8-July-2004 -- Catholic World News Brief
Brussels, Belgium, Jul. 08 (CWNews.com) - The
European Court of Human Rights said on Thursday that it was up to national
governments to decide the issue of whether unborn children should receive full
human rights as it rejected a case appealed to the court by a French woman.
Thi-Nho Vo had filed her lawsuit after she was forced to have an abortion
after a doctor's mistake. She argued that France had violated the right to life
of her unborn child after courts in the country refused to convict the doctor of
involuntary homicide. The European court said the issue of the right to life of
the unborn "was a question to be decided at the national level ... because
the issue had not been decided within the majority of states" that have
signed on to the European Convention on Human Rights.
In a 14-2 decision, the European Court concluded that "it was neither
desirable, nor even possible ... to answer in the abstract the question whether
the unborn child was a person." Pro-abortion groups had warned that a court
decision accepting the right to life of the unborn would make abortions illegal
in all 45 countries that recognize the court's jurisdiction. On November 27,
1991, when she was six months' pregnant, Vo went to Hotel-Dieu Hospital in Lyons
for a medical examination. On the same day another woman, Thanh Van Vo, was due
to have a coil removed at the same hospital. Because of a mix-up caused by the
fact that both women had the same surname, the doctor who examined the pregnant
Mrs. Vo pierced her amniotic sac and court documents indicate that the action
made "a therapeutic abortion necessary." Following a criminal
complaint lodged by Vo in 1991, Dr. Francois Golfier was charged with causing
unintentional injury. The charge was subsequently increased to one of
unintentional homicide. On June 3, 1996, Lyons Criminal Court acquitted Golfier.
Vo appealed and, on March 13, 1997, Lyons Court of Appeal overturned the
criminal court's judgment, convicted the doctor of unintentional homicide and
sentenced him to six-months' imprisonment, suspended, and a fine of 10,000
French francs. On June 30, 1999, following an appeal on points of law, the Court
of Cessation reversed the Court of Appeal's judgment, holding that the facts of
the case did not constitute the offense of involuntary homicide since the court
refused to consider the unborn child a human being entitled to the protection of
the criminal law.
The same European Court of Human Rights has, in the past, ruled that a
British man who underwent sex-reassignment surgery must be recognized as woman
and be allowed to marry; overturned British laws banning homosexual group sex;
and ordered the British military to allow homosexuals to serve in its ranks. The
court's pro-homosexual rulings have also played a role in American
jurisprudence, when US Supreme Court justices appealed to the European court's
rulings on homosexuality as part of their justification for overturning a Texas
anti-sodomy law.