University of St. Thomas Journal of Law and Public Policy Volume 9 Issue 1 Fall 2014 Article 1 January 2014 Abortion and the Laws of War: Subverting Humanitarianism by Executive Edict Susan Yoshihara Follow this and additional works at: https://ir.stthomas.edu/ustjlpp Part of the Human Rights Law Commons, and the Military, War, and Peace Commons Recommended Citation Susan Yoshihara, Abortion and the Laws of War: Subverting Humanitarianism by Executive Edict, 9 U. ST. THOMAS J.L. & PUB. POL'Y 1 (2014). Available at: https://ir.stthomas.edu/ustjlpp/vol9/iss1/1 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by UST Research Online and the University of St. Thomas Journal of Law and Public Policy. For more information, please contact the Editor-in-Chief at
[email protected]. ABORTION AND THE LAWS OF WAR: SUBVERTING HUMANITARIANISM BY EXECUTIVE EDICT SUSAN YOSHIHARA' INTRODUCTION Humanitarian principles are under siege everywhere. From the shooting down of the Malaysian airliner in Ukraine, beheading of Western journalists and aid workers in Syria, murder of Christians in Iraq, and abduction of children as soldiers and sex slaves in the Congo-the headlines are filled with the flouting of international humanitarian law. That law is meant to protect non-combatants from the scourge of war. This essay tells the story of one of those disregarded principles: the prohibition against rape. The story is about why renewed efforts to get warring nations to obey the law could be brought down by a parallel movement to get Western nations to redefine it with a right to abortion.