Revisiting <i>Baby Boy v. United States</i>: Why the IACHR Resolution did not Effectively Undermine the Inter-American System on Human Rights' Protection of the Right to Life from Conception

This Article examines the nature of the Baby Boy resolution, its potential legal effects, the legal weight it actually has in the Inter-American system, and whether it created a treaty exception to the right to life for voluntary abortion. It concludes that Baby Boy did not validly create an abortion exception to the right to life in the Inter-American system on human rights. It also demonstrates that Baby Boy is not an authoritative interpretation of the Declaration or the Convention, has no precedential value on abortion in the Inter-American system of human rights, and therefore neither Latin American states nor the Inter-American Court on Human Rights have a duty to follow the Commission’s decision therein.