FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE  – March 2, 2012

[NEW YORK, NY] –  The Global Justice Center’s August 12th campaign is gaining momentum. The Vice-Presidents of the European Parliament have written a letter to Obama to issue an Executive order to lift all current U.S abortion restrictions that prohibit girls and women raped in armed conflict from terminating their pregnancy.

The letter urges the US to abide by common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions and also comes out in support of Norway’s recommendations during the 2010 UPR that US “remov[e] blanket abortion restrictions on humanitarian aid covering medical care given women and girls who are raped and impregnated in situations of armed conflict.”

Excerpt:

We write to you as concerned Vice-Presidents of the European Parliament, who share a common view that ensuring the rights of persons “wounded and sick” in armed conflict under the Geneva Conventions is critical to our international legal order. We echo the concerns of those signatories to the amicus brief filed by the UK and European parliamentarians in the Hamdan v. Rumsfeld case, urging the US Supreme Court to apply common Article 3 to review the US military commissions and indeed are some of the same signatories. We applaud the United States’ commitment to advancing global implementation of the laws of war, a key example being your Executive Order revoking the “torture memos” to ensure that the US is in compliance with its obligations under the Geneva Conventions and the Convention Against Torture (CAT).

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