Conscientious Objection to Abortion: A Comparative International Legal Framework

Abstract

This study provides a comparative legal analysis of the understanding of the content
and mutual position of some human rights associated with artificial termination of pregnancy,
the understanding reflected at the universal level of international legal inter-state cooperation
in the acts of human rights treaty bodies. While, in essence, the fact of artificial termination of
pregnancy raises human rights questions in relation to three subjects (a woman carrying a child,
an unborn child and a doctor who performs an abortion or refuses to perform it), from the point
of human rights protection, it is almost exclusively about a woman, whose life and materialistically
understood interests are prioritized over all other human rights aspects. In this work, it is the
rights of various subjects who find themselves bound through abortion, the scope and protection
of these rights by international law, limited to the International Bill of Human Rights as an international
legal basis for comparison are subjected to comparison. The authors illustrate their theses
with two cases against the doctors who refused to carry out an abortion procedure for reasons
of conscience in accordance with their Christian beliefs in Poland and Argentina, correspondingly.
The article was prepared with the financial support of the Russian Foundation for Basic Research
within the framework of research project № 18-011-00292.