Excerpt of New York Review of Books that quotes GJC President Akila Radhakrishnan.
According to Akila Radhakrishnan, a human rights lawyer and president of the Global Justice Center, international humanitarian law supersedes national abortion laws: doctors in humanitarian settings have an obligation to provide care regardless. This is analogous, she argued, to the doctor’s duty to provide care to any person injured in a conflict even if the laws of country they are working in forbid the provision of care to people affiliated with so-designated terrorist organizations. The International Committee of the Red Cross also has guidelines that tell aid workers that in emergencies, international humanitarian law takes precedence over domestic rules.
“It’s unclear why [abortion would be different],” said Radhakrishnan. “We seem reluctant to make these connections when it comes to women’s bodies…. the denial of abortion, certainly to rape victims, has also been found to be torture. But you don’t see that same kind of outcry from a broad constituency when abortion services are denied.”