UN states that criminalizing abortion is torture

I can't believe this. The committee in charge of overseeing the Convention Against Torture (CAT) has declared that Nicaragua's law that forbids abortion violates the Torture Convention. (See the story here )

I've read a lot of allegations against the pro-life movement, and I am rarely outraged anymore, but this is outrageous! Last year, as part of my international law training, I spent a lot of time looking at what torture is, how we define it etc. I read some truly heinous accounts of what we do to our fellow humans- quite often it turned my stomach and gave me nightmares.

I can't even believe that someone would say that preventing the murder of unborn children is torture to the mothers. And yet, this is what the committee is saying. I don't understand it. They have to have read the same court cases and first hand accounts that I did- of people being starved, beaten and broken, and yet they can equate that with the murder of an unborn child? I don't understand.

Internationally there is no one accepted definition of torture (this causes problems, but that's international law for you) The CAT has the most widely accepted definition and defines torture in Article 1 as:

...the term "torture" means any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. It does not include pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in or incidental to lawful sanctions.

Please tell me how any of that equates to preventing women from having abortions, because I just don't see how that works. I expect silly statements like this from Planned Parenthood and other pro-abortion organizations, but not from the UN committee who's sole purpose is to find and prosecute instances of torture around the globe.

There are men, women and children being tortured in many countries around the world as we speak. The UN is doing nothing to stop it, mostly for political reasons. But a country that tries to protect life? Well that must be torture. Because its politically expedient and because the UN is trying to push a population control agenda, we will go after that.

This is disgusting and a betrayal of the values the UN was founded on. I've long thought that the UN is irrelevant, and with decisions like this, they are merely proving my point.