PART THREE: PROTECTING MINORITY RIGHTS PART THREE abortions or provide access to contraception on religious grounds. In Uruguay, for example, women can elect to have an abortion, but in certain regions up to 87 per cent of medical providers refuse to perform abortions. Participants in the Special Rapporteur’s consultations from countries such as Kenya, Poland and the United States noted that the invocation of “conscience clauses” provided in law had made access to legal abortion effectively unavailable to women in significant parts of the country. The Special Rapporteur notes that the Human Rights Committee has expressed concern about this phenomenon, in addition to the absence of effective referral mechanisms for accessing legal abortion medical services as a result of the exercise of conscientious objection.1039 The Special Rapporteur recalls that the Human Rights Committee has called on States to ensure that women have access to legal abortion notwithstanding conscientious objection by medical practitioners, which it has referred to as a “barrier” to access (CCPR/C/POL/CO/7, paras. 23–24; and CCPR/C/COL/CO/7, paras. 20–21), and has suggested that conscientious objection should only be permitted, if at all, for individual medical providers.1040 The Special Rapporteur was presented with additional information about gender-based discrimination by private persons refusing to provide medical or other services to women, girls and LGBT+ persons and who cited religious objections for doing so. At the consultations in the United States, for example, it was noted that individuals had refused to provide services to LGBT+ persons, including in the areas of family planning and prenatal care, infertility treatment, adoption, housing,1041 lodging, employment and commercial services. … Moreover, … legal exemptions to anti-discrimination measures on the grounds of religious commitments were being increasingly accommodated. Participants in the consultations on the Americas noted, for example, that those outcomes had resulted in the termination of pregnant employees for being unmarried; the denial of insurance coverage for legal reproductive health services; refusals to discharge prescriptions for contraception and the impeding of the ability to obtain legal abortion services, and the denial of health services and treatment to LGBT+ persons.1042 2. Family and personal status law: marriage, divorce, inheritance and burial Tensions between traditional, religious or communal rules, on the one hand, and the right to non-discrimination, on the other, have manifested themselves in a number of areas, in particular in marriage and family law. In cases in which communities assert a purported right to discriminate with reference to communal rules, these efforts have been overruled, either by courts or by administrators. Article 15 of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women sets out that: 1. States Parties shall accord to women equality with men before the law. 2. States Parties shall accord to women, in civil matters, a legal capacity identical to that of men and the same opportunities to exercise that capacity. In particular, they shall give women equal rights to conclude contracts and to administer property and shall treat them equally in all stages of procedure in courts and tribunals. 3. States Parties agree that all contracts and all other private instruments of any kind with a legal effect which is directed at restricting the legal capacity of women shall be deemed null and void. 4. States Parties shall accord to men and women the same rights with regard to the law relating to the movement of persons and the freedom to choose their residence and domicile. Some States have endeavoured to make reservations in respect of article 15 when ratifying the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women. States have similarly made reservations in 1039 Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, general comment No. 22 (2016), paras. 14, 43 and 60; Committee on the Rights of the Child, general comment No. 15 (2013), para. 69; and A/HRC/32/44. 1040 Human Rights Committee, general comment No. 36 (2019), para. 8. 1041 On the human rights obligations of private businesses that provide services traditionally provided by the public sector, see Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, general comment No. 24 (2017), para. 21. 1042 A/HRC/43/48, paras. 43–44. OHCHR has noted that: “States must organize their health system to ensure that women are not prevented from accessing health services by health professionals’ exercise of conscientious objection.” See OHCHR, “Information series on sexual and reproductive health and rights: abortion” (2020). Available at www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/Documents/Issues/Women/WRGS/ SexualHealth/INFO_Abortion_WEB.pdf. 151