CCPR/C/116/D/2324/2013 13. Ireland’s near-comprehensive criminalization of abortion services denies access to reproductive medical services that only women need, and imposes no equivalent burden on men’s access to reproductive health care. It thus clearly treats men and women differently on the basis of sex for purposes of article 26. Such differential treatment constitutes invidious sex and gender discrimination unless it reasonable and objective to a legitimate purpose under the Covenant – requirements that the Committee found were not satisfied here. 14. The author also articulates an alternative basis for a finding of gender discrimination – that Ireland’s legal regime is based on traditional stereotypes regarding the reproductive role of women, by placing the woman’s reproductive function above her physical and mental health and autonomy. The fact that the State party may have pointed to a facially nondiscriminatory purpose for its legal regime does not mean that its laws may not also be informed by such stereotypes. Indeed, the State’s laws appear to take such stereotypes to an extreme degree where, as here, the author’s pregnancy was nonviable and any claimed purpose of protecting a foetus could have no purchase. Requiring the author to carry a fatally impaired pregnancy to term only underscores the extent to which the State party has prioritized (whether intentionally or unintentionally) the reproductive role of women as mothers, and exposes its claimed justification in this context as a reductio ad absurdum. 15. The Committee has recognized that “[i]nequality in the enjoyment of rights by women throughout the world is deeply embedded in tradition, history and culture, including religious attitudes” and has admonished States parties to ensure that such attitudes are not q used to justify violations of women’s rights . In numerous prior cases, the Committee has invalidated as discriminatory both legislation and practices that reflected gendered stereotypes of women’s social and biological role. For example, the Committee found that a law that imposed greater obstacles to choosing the wife’s name as the family name could r not be justified based on arguments of “long-standing tradition” and violated article 26 , as did a law that required married women, but not married men, to establish that they were the s “breadwinner” to receive unemployment benefits . More directly relevant here, in L.N.P. v. Argentina, the Committee found that the conduct of police, medical, and judicial personnel aimed at casting doubt on the morality of an indigenous minor rape victim based on t stereotypes of virginity and sexual morality violated article 26 . And in V.D.A (L.M.R.) v. Argentina, the Committee concluded that failure to provide a legally available abortion to a u mentally impaired minor constituted gender discrimination . Similarly, in L.C. v. Peru the CEDAW Committee found that a hospital’s decision to defer needed surgery in preference for preserving a rape victim’s pregnancy “was influenced by the stereotype that protection v of the foetus should prevail over the health of the mother” and thus violated CEDAW. q r s t u v General Comment No. 28, para. 5. Communication No. 919/2000, Müller and Engelhard v. Namibia (Views adopted 26 March 2002), para. 6.8. Communication No. 172/1984, Broeks v. The Netherlands (Views adopted 9 April 1987), para. 15; accord Communication No. 182/1984, F. H. Zwaan-de Vries v. The Netherlands (Views adopted 9 April 1987), paras. 14-15 (“a differentiation which appears on one level to be one of status is in fact one of sex, placing married women at a disadvantage compared with married men”). See also Communication No. 415/1990, Pauger v. Austria (Views adopted 26 March 1992), para. 7.4 (pension law imposing an income requirement on widowers but not widows unreasonably differentiated on the basis of sex in violation of article 26). Communication No. 1610/2007 (Views adopted 18 July 2011), para. 13.3. Communication No. 1608/2007 (Views adopted 29 March 2011), para. 9.4 (finding a violation of article 2(3) in relation to articles 3, 7, and 17). L.C. v. Peru, supra, para. 8.15 (finding violations of CEDAW articles 5 and 12). 23