¿Tiene algún valor para la Corte IDH el caso Baby Boy vs. EEUU resuelto por la Comisión Interamericana?

¿Si la interpretación que la Comisión Interamericana realiza respecto a una norma del Sistema Interamericano no sigue las pautas de interpretación de los tratados fijadas por el Derecho Internacional, tiene esa interpretación algún valor para los Estados de la región? ¿Las interpretaciones que la Comisión Interamericana realiza del articulado de la Declaración Americana tienen algún efecto vinculante respecto de los Estados Parte en la Convención Americana o tienen algún efecto en la Corte Interamericana?  A estas dos preguntas Ligia M. De Jesús responde negativamente en su artículo “Revisiting Baby Boy v. United States: Why the IACHR Resolution Did Not Effectively Undermine the Inter-American System on Human Rights’ Protection of the Right to Life from Conception”, publicado en Florida Journal of International Law (Vol. 23, pp. 221-276, 2011).  Este es el resumen del artículo:

“Not many are aware Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton were challenged before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) in 1981. In Baby Boy v. United States, the quasi-judicial regional human rights body concluded that the abortion of Baby Boy, a viable male fetus, was permissible under the American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man and, incidentally, the American Convention on Human Rights, notwithstanding the fact that the latter protects the right to life "from the moment of conception" and the former contains an implied right to life for every "human being". In addition, the Commission held that the United States’ creation of a fundamental right to abortion through Roe v. Wade was not incompatible with the Declaration or the Convention and that neither instrument required member states to ban abortion. 

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 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 on Human Rights have a duty to follow the Commission’s decision therein”.

El texto completo de este artículo puede encontrarse en el portal SSRN (ver aquí).