NEW YORK — A United Nations treaty guaranteeing rights to the disabled narrowly failed Dec. 4 to get the necessary two-thirds majority it needed in the U.S. Senate to become part of American law, thanks to intense lobbying by parents’ rights groups, home-schoolers, pro-life Catholics and an immovable minority of Republican senators.
Sixty-one senators, mostly Democrats, voted for ratification of the U.N. Convention on the Rights of Persons With Disabilities. Thirty-eight senators, all Republicans, voted against it.
But because international treaties require a two-thirds Senate supermajority to be ratified, those 38 votes were more than enough to at least stall the measure, which has been ratified by more than 150 other countries over the past six years, until the newly elected 113th Congress replaces the outgoing 112th in January.
“We were quite happy to win,” said Austin Ruse, president of the Catholic Family & Human Rights Institute (C-FAM). “We were nervous going into the vote, but so was [Sen.] John Kerry.” Kerry, the senior Democratic senator from Massachusetts, was in charge of rounding up supporters for the U.N. treaty.
C-FAM opposed the treaty, along with the Holy See, because one of the program areas where the convention prohibited discrimination against the disabled was that of “reproductive health.” The Vatican opposed inclusion of this phrase from the start of the document’s drafting because of its potential to be interpreted to include abortion, and it continues to oppose any such interpretation of “reproductive health,” Ruse said.
But had the Senate ratified the disabilities treaty, the U.S. would have been accountable to a U.N. committee for its performance in complying with its provisions. According to Ruse and other pro-life U.N. watchdogs, the committees that monitor international human-rights treaties are notoriously ideological and pro-abortion in their interpretations of U.N. treaties.
For example, the Colombian high court recently used “non-binding” comments by U.N. committees to overrule a law protecting the unborn, while a U.N. committee on torture has called Nicaragua’s law protecting the unborn a form of torture.
Not Necessary?
American opponents of the disabilities treaty also insist its ratification is unnecessary.
“We don’t need this treaty,” said Ruse. “We already have the toughest law for disabled people in the world: the Americans With Disabilities Act.”
Nonetheless, some 300 disabilities, veterans and civil-rights groups joined the coalition lobbying for the treaty.
“That is why it was so close,” said Michael Ramey, spokesman for Parental Rights, the group that headed a much smaller coalition against the treaty. “Their side had instant sympathy with all the disabled people, and senators felt they had to support it.”
With only 40 member organizations, the opponents nonetheless mounted a strong blitz on the Senate after learning the Democrats planned to seek ratification during the dying days of the outgoing, lame-duck Senate.
Normally, Ramey told the Register, virtually every Republican and even some Democratic senators can be relied upon to vote against U.N. treaties on the principle of protecting national sovereignty. The Constitution, he said, identifies ratified international treaties as part of American law. And while the Supreme Court has made it clear that no treaty can undermine written constitutional guarantees such as freedom of religion, it is uncertain that less formalized legal rights, such as the rights of parents to bring up their children as they judge best, would prevail in court against such treaties.
What is feared by Parental Rights and its allies, such as C-FAM, the Family Research Council, the Home School Legal Defense Association, Concerned Women for America, Heritage Action, Patriot Voices, Eagle Forum, Joni & Friends and the American Conservative Union, is that the disability-rights treaty would give the federal government the legal authority to override parents, especially home-schooling and Christian parents.
‘Best Interests of the Child’
According to Ramey, opponents particularly fear the treaty’s usage of the legal phrase “in the best interest of the child” in elements of the treaty dealing with disabled minor children. The concern is that this phrase, which enjoins the state to intervene on behalf of children when it judges this necessary to protect their interests, could authorize governments to overrule parents with respect to how best care for their disabled children.
The home-school associations, many of whose members home school precisely because they found public schools inadequate for their disabled children’s needs, are concerned the state will wrest their children back into schools against parental desires.
The 85,000-member Home School Legal Defense Association cites a recent ruling by a judge in Botswana who cited the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child, the 1992 U.N. document which enshrined the “best interests of the child” concept into international law, to order four Seventh-Day Adventist families to send their children to public schools.
Rick Santorum, the former Republican senator from Pennsylvania and recent presidential candidate, was the most prominent Catholic home-schooling parent to speak out against the disabilities treaty. Santorum told a Washington press conference that the U.N. convention, “if ratified, threatens U.S. sovereignty and parental rights and would, effectively, put the U.S. under international law when it comes to parenting special-needs children. One provision in the treaty would give the government, acting under U.N. instructions, the ability to determine for all children with disabilities what is best for them.”
Santorum, whose own daughter Bella has a genetic disorder called trisomy 18, continued, “I don’t know about you, but I believe that in America that is the parents’ job, certainly not the government’s.”
Advocates for the treaty sought to paint their opponents as extremists, in part by highlighting moderate Republicans who supported the treaty. Treaty proponent and onetime Republican presidential candidate Bob Dole was brought to the Senate floor in his wheelchair to rally support. “He is here,” Kerry said of his 89-year-old former Senate colleague, “because he wants to know that other countries will come to treat the disabled as we do.”
Susan Yoshihara, vice president of C-FAM, made a pointed reply to Kerry’s remarks in an article posted on The Hill’s Congress blog. In it, she noted that one way America currently treats the disabled is to abort 90% of babies with Down syndrome in the womb.
Post-vote comments by David Morrissey, executive director of the U.S. International Council on Disabilities, made it clear the treaty’s supporters had believed they had sewn up a sufficient number of Republican senators, only to be abandoned by some Republicans, including Jerry Moran and Pat Roberts of Kansas, Kay Hutchison of Texas and Roy Blunt of Missouri, without warning at the last minute. They blamed the efforts of right-wing organizations for the defeat.
Safeguarding Parents' Rights
The treaty’s supporters promise to bring it back in the new Senate that convenes in January, but Parental Rights’ Ramey told the Register his group would be back as well.
Along with resisting any renewed drive for Senate ratification of the disabilities treaty, the group will be continuing its promotion of a constitutional amendment to institutionalize parental rights more fully into American law. The group is fairly confident it can secure two-thirds approval in the House of Representatives and the required support of three-quarters of the 50 U.S. states.
“The big hurdle is the Senate,” Ramey commented. “We are hoping sooner or later to get it passed there.”
Register correspondent Steve Weatherbe writes from Victoria, British Columbia.
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Regardless of the subject matter, the US should never subjugate itself to UN committees or laws.
Constitutional amendment to etch “parental primacy rights” into law? BS! There really are bad parents who do not operate on “best interest” of their children, but rather in their own querks and extreme prejudice. A mentally disabled child, for example, is assaulted, has an ectopic pregnancy ensue which threatens her life AND parents are right wing wackos that won’t permit intervention to save her life? With parenthood comes responsibility as well as “rights.“Funny how these same folks want to ensure basic human rights to the unborn, but deny the best interest protections to the living. Just another example of perverse logic that operates in those circles.
I had to read this to understand it, but HOORAY! The measure as it stands is insidious and could can easily further harm those it aims to help.
As one who has had her hands full, honors or not, getting a normal life back after a total disability at one point, the area of rights for disabled could really use improvement.
BUT I SUPPORT THIS STATUS COMPLETELY because : if the law passed, it could soon degenerate into forced sterilizations and worse, adding to the burden of those already disabled.
As it is, when a disabled person becomes involved in benefits , there is a very unwholesome and destructive oppression that comes into play , all too often.
This of course adds to the suffering of the disabled person, and makes it much more difficult to simply get better and get back at it, as an UNdisabled entity.
There is also oppression when the disabled person opts to become “UN"disabled, so that, again , a simple normal restoration of a life is not going to be.
The disabled observe this difficulty in the lives of others striving to become UNdisabled and “chicken out” re: recuperation and regaining a normal life path and getting themselves “off the dole” .
Not only is all this very dehumanizing , it is at the top of the list for cause for the large number “on the dole” - they feel trapped in benefits.
Most would do much more independently if they could.
Laws are needed to be sure the disabled are no longer oppressed.
But again I thank the watchdogs in Church and Government, in this matter, who prevented an effort from backfiring and creating a situation worse than the original scenario.
“The best interests of the child” is the phrase which scares me. As the mother a ten year old daughter with Down syndrome, I know what the UN considers her best interests. All you have to do is look at the UNPFA website, to know what passes for human rights.
They would say she has a right to unbridled sexual expression, and if she gets pregnant, she has the right to an abortion. They may call me oppressive for denying her those ‘rights’ and for teaching Catholic moral teaching, while sheltering her from those who would abuse her sexually. They might use that as an excused to tear her out of my arms to institutionalize her in a politically correct environment. Over my dead body.
“What is feared by Parental Rights and its allies such as C-FAM, the Family Research Council, the Home School Legal Defense Association, Concerned Women for America, Heritage Action, Patriot Voices, Eagle Forum, Joni & Friends, and the American Conservative Union, is that the disability rights treaty would give the federal government the legal authority to override parents, especially homeschooling and Christian parents.”
Legislate by fear? Supported by the Roman Catholic Church? No wonder there is no longer any hope for civil dialogue among people with opposing concerns. I never hought I’d live to see the day when the Holy See would support these fear-mongering tactics. I am so sad to see the Church lower itself to the tactics of the secular world.
The vote was pretty close, and Harry Reid has vowed to bring it to a vote again after the 1st of the year, probably, I imagine, when we are all distracted by the “fiscal cliff”
http://www.reid.senate.gov/newsroom/pr_120412_disabilities-treaty.cfm
Yep, Republicans covered themselves with glory on this one. All the news stories featured the paranoia of homeschoolers as the reason for opposing it. Nobody in America believes Bob Dole is a crazy left-wing extremist. But nobody in America has trouble believing Santorum is a crazy right-wing extremist. Way to be on track to position the Democratic party for more WIN in the next elections.
This Democrat applauds your efforts to push the Republican party farther into the fringes.
Yay, ignorance and paranoia win again! Nowhere in this treaty is American sovereignty challenged. But as I can see from many of the comments here from people like Elle Fagan, your tin-foil hats were firmly on your heads as you commented here. Luckily people like you and those who supported defeating this measure will soon be footnotes in our history right along with people who wanted to make sure blacks had to drink from different drinking fountains. Get used to the dustbin of history because that’s where you are going.
Michael OBRIENmi ,
Are you actually aware of any group who prefers a daughter & grandchild to both perish together due to an ectopic pregnancy? I’m not.
“A mentally disabled child, for example, is assaulted, has an ectopic pregnancy ensue which threatens her life AND parents are right wing wackos that won’t permit intervention to save her life?”
I think there’s something called double effect. Wherein all is done to save both mother and child. If the child should die as a natural cause of the mother needing surgery, that’s different from seeing the child itself as the problem and some sort of parasite. So there’s an ethical difference in any sort of intervention that one might perform. I think this is worth reading up on instead of fuming and frothing at the mouth about “right-wing wackos” and presuming that Catholic teaching aims to pit the child against the mother and unborn children against those who are born (and did you mean to imply that those who are unborn are not yet “alive” by your statement about “protection to the living”?). Now that’s not just presumption, but that really is prejudice. Pot, meet kettle.
“With parenthood comes responsibility as well as “rights.“”
Precisely. Responsibility to the fullness of the truth about the human person.
Why not post the names of the senators who did vote for the U.N. Disabilities treaty? Otherwise, we won’t find out who did it from our local news media. Richard Moore
If those on the extreme left could attempt to discuss matters such as this without first demonizing those who stand on the other side, perhaps our country could make some real progress.
to reply to WSquared - that is not the thing. I AM PRO LIFE. As one who has worked with red cross and community shelter response etc..and been disabled herself, they were right in NOT voting the bill into law IN ITS PRESENT FORM .
The wording in the bill MUST be done and re-done and re-re-done , until the bill says the right thing.
BECAUSE- Once they vote it in, it opens a HUGE door for a thousand paths of action, and some of those paths directly opposed to best motives that inspired the law. From a goal to simply uphold the rights of disabled better, the thing might have been perverted to allow whole towns to be sterilized and worse - using the word freedom and the word rights to actually overpower and dominate inhumanely. So be glad it’s gone back for serious “tweaking”
Faith , Hope and Love ...and we will get there.
Kevin Rahe posted by on Tuesday, Dec 11, 2012 5:12 PM (EDT):
“If those on the extreme left could attempt to discuss matters such as this without first demonizing those who stand on the other side, perhaps our country could make some real progress.”
Apparently liberals don’t need to do anything to make real progress. Republicans are happy to make spectacles of themselves by grandstanding to oppose rights for the disabled while digging in their heels to help the rich get richer. These activities are accompanied by comments about “legitimate rape” and the supposed natural ability of the female body to prevent impregnation by a rapist. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/4078677.stm
Why should liberals exert themselves at all when Republicans are willing to publicly act out their own nutty fantasies of being besieged by home schooling enemies and take all the parts themselves?
@ Richard Moore: the information is at:
http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=112&session=2&vote=00219
Or you can get there by going to parentalrights.org and following the appropriate links.
Doesn’t it always work out that when governments and politicians put nice sounding words on things that the most evil comes from them?
I agree completely, and those of us who know what lies beyond the noble sounding rhetoric are demonized for being against the rights of the disabled. That really hurts, considering my advocacy work, and my love for my daughter with Down syndrome.
Really people, how does this have anything to do with abortion? Besides it doesn’t force parents to do anything,it just offers suggestions. Republicans it seems like just have to disagree with the other side.
The left-wing Portland, Oregon diocesan paper ‘The Catholic Sentinel’ favors this UN treaty. Somebody needs to take the editor at the paper to task.
http://www.catholicsentinel.org/main.asp?SectionID=3&SubSectionID=38&ArticleID=20311
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