"One of Us" Initiative seriously undermined by an intiative report on Sexual and Reproductive Rights
The European Citizens' Initiative (ECI) "One of Us" to protect and respect the dignity and integrity of the human embryo is seriously undermined by the opposition who is working on its counter-offensive by an own initiative report on sexual and reproductive rights. It has already been adopted by the
Committee on Women’s Rights and Gender Equality on September 18.
Rapporteur Edite Estrela — a member of the Progressive Alliance of
Socialists and Democrats group in the European Parliament — argued
strongly in favour of legalizing abortion in all European Member States
with no consideration for the fundamental rights to life and conscience
recognized by the EU.
This issue should be taken very seriously and we should do our utmost to put this under the attention in media and MEPs. The aim of this own-initiative report is to neutralise the ECI by a "zero sum game" where nobody really wins. If this resolution passes in Plenary, the EU institutions have an alibi to avoid any further action on the ECI. The vote for a resolution is expected to be at 22 October.
The pro-abortion lobby is very clear on this issue and the motion for a resolution will include the following statements:
- "whereas access to safe abortion is banned, except in very narrow circumstances, in three EU Member States (Ireland, Malta and Poland) and remains widely unavailable, through legal, through the abuse of conscientious objection or overly restrictive interpretations of existing limits;
- recommends that, as a human rights concern, abortion should be made legal, safe, and accessible for all
- Underlines that even when legal, abortion is often prevented or delayed by obstacles to the access of appropriate services, such as the widespread use of conscientious objection, medically unnecessary waiting periods or biased counselling; stresses that Member States should regulate and monitor the use of conscientious objection so as to ensure that reproductive health care is guaranteed as an individual’s right, while access to lawful services is ensured and appropriate and affordable referrals systems are in place;
The final report as adopted in the committee will be released on Tuesday 15 October. The vote is to be expected on 22 October in the European Parliament
The European Parliament will vote on highly controversial Draft Report on Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights (SRHR) during October.
The report has already been adopted by the
Committee on Women’s Rights and Gender Equality on September 18.
Rapporteur Edite Estrela — a member of the Progressive Alliance of
Socialists and Democrats group in the European Parliament — argued
strongly in favour of legalizing abortion in all European Member States
with no consideration for the fundamental rights to life and conscience
recognized by the EU
The European Parliament will vote on highly controversial Draft Report on Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights
(SRHR) during October. In a statement after the committee vote, Zita
Gurmai, an MEP for the Hungarian Socialist Party, said the report’s
“clear stance in favour of legalizing abortion in all member states and
the recommendations that abortion should be made legal, safe, and
accessible to all, is an encouraging position. We Socialists have always
believed that women, everywhere in Europe, should have the same
opportunity and access to fully carry out their choice — a choice, which
should not be determined by geographical location or by social status.”
Estrela recommends that abortion be made legal,
safe, and accessible to all — despite the obvious encroachment on at
least a couple of internationally accepted norms. For instance, the
radical claim is made in the Draft Report that “Member States
should regulate and monitor the use of conscientious objection so as to
ensure that reproductive health care is guaranteed as an individual’s
right” (§11).
To justify such heavy-handed state policies, the same paragraph
claims that “even when legal, abortion is often prevented or delayed by
obstacles ... such as the widespread use of conscientious objection”.
And in Section G, the report deplores the fact that “access to safe
abortion ... remains widely unavailable, though legal, through the abuse
of conscientious objection or overly restrictive interpretations of
existing limits”. It even trots out statistics from Hungary, Ireland,
Italy, Poland, Romania, and Slovakia — “where nearly 70% of all
gynaecologists and 40% of all anaesthesiologists conscientiously object
to providing abortion services”.
“These barriers clearly contradict human rights standards”, the
report argues. Her claim is that the internationally granted right to
conscientious objection — and, consequently, the fundamental freedom to not
participate in a practice contrary to one’s conscience within the
boundaries prescribed by law — is an obstacle to the establishment of a
so-called “right to abortion”. The majority who voted in favour of the
report in committee bluntly ignores that such a right exists nowhere in
international law and is ready to sacrifice internationally recognized
rights, such as the right to conscientious objection.
The Draft Report — which is due for a vote in European
Parliament’s plenary session next week —mixes so-called “abortion
rights” with facts. But it then goes further, calling on EU Member
States “to ensure compulsory, age-appropriate and gender-sensitive
sexuality and relationship education for all children and adolescents
(both in and out of school)” (§15). Sexuality education “must include
the fight against stereotypes and prejudices, shed light on gender and
sexual orientation discrimination, and structural barriers to
substantive equality”. One can only speculate on the exact method of
implementation of these noble-sounding but eminently dangerous aims; but
there is a clar political will that some of these radical ideas would
be transmitted to pupils through the educational system.
This isn’t the first attempt to push such an extreme project at the
European level. The Estrela report reminds us of the controversy at the
Council of Europe in 2010, when a radical attempt to limit freedom of
conscience was introduced by British politician and pro-abortion
activist Christine McCafferty. In a report that has since been known as
the McCafferty Report, an attempt was made to severely diminish
the freedom of medical practitioners, nurses, and hospital staff to
oppose unethical medical practices such as abortion or euthanasia for
reasons of conscience.
The initiative was eventually defeated — and then turned on its head:
Instead of restricting the right to conscientious objection, a majority
in the Parliamentary Assembly acknowledged and strengthened it by
adopting Resolution 1763
which invited Member States to “guarantee the right to conscientious
objection in relation to participation in the medical procedure in
question”. The Assembly also stated that “in the vast majority of
Council of Europe member states, the practice of conscientious objection
is adequately regulated”.
Despite this consensus for a strong protection of the right to conscientious objection, the Draft Report is reminiscent of the McCafferty Report:
It not only puts the fundamental right to conscientious objection,
politically speaking, at stake but makes serious legally unfounded
recommendations — such as promoting abortion “as a human rights concern”
and making it “legal, safe, and accessible to all” (§10). That such
extreme positions are being actively promoted in the European Parliament
by some MEPs despite the numerous objections from the other two main EU
institutions, the European Commission and the European Council — both
of which have stressed that the EU has no competence under its treaties to deal with the issue of abortion — should be a cause of great concern for several reasons.
First, Estrela and most of the Women’s Committee in Parliament who voted in favour of the Draft Report have blatantly ignored European trends which point to greater protection of human life from conception onwards.
At the level of European institutions, the European Court of Justice
has been crystal clear, about the right to life, establishing in Brüstle
vs. Greenpeace that the human embryo deserves legal protection from the
very first moment of its existence. In addition, a new study on “Abortion and the European Convention on Human Rights”
undertaken by the European Centre for Law and Justice reveals that the
Convention does not contain — nor does it create — a right to abortion.
On the contrary, abortion on demand violates the Convention, harming the
interests and the rights guaranteed to citizens without any
proportionate justification.
At the grass-roots level, too, there is increasing consensus among
European citizens that there should be more protection of the human
embryo within the European Union. An example is the remarkably
successful European Citizen‘s Initiative “One of Us”, which asks the EU
to end the financing of activities which presuppose the destruction of
human embryos; it has already collected over 1 million signatures.
Unfortunately, none of this seems to mean much to the Committee on
Women’s Rights and Gender Equality who voted in favour of the report.
Their ideological zeal to trample on other rights and impose the “right
to abortion” on the rest of Europe embodies precisely the arrogant and
patronizing attitude that threatens the freedom of conscience — and that
we should all vociferously reject.
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