European Parliament : Women’s Rights committee to discuss radical pro-abortion report

The European Parliament’s “Committee on Women’s Rights  and Gender Equality” (FEMM) is back at its favourite occupation: the drafting of legally non-binding “initiative reports” with ultra-radical content which, if adopted, will be touted as representing the will of 500 million EU citizens and as a yardstick for the political action of both the EU and its Member States. This claim is of course ludicrous – on the one hand because those reports are, as already mentioned, not legally binding, and on the other hand because many of the matters they deal with are clearly outside the EU’s competence.

The upcoming FEMM meeting on 20 January will deal with a radical report on” the Progress on equality between women and men in the European Union in 2013”, named the “Tarabella Report”  after Marc Tarabella, the Belgian left-wing MEP who drafted it. Section 14 of the draft contains FEMM’s hundred-and-umpteenth attempt to give the appearance of legitimacy to the sad practice of abortion, which costs hundreds of thousands  of human lives every year in the EU alone, and tens of millions world-wide.

Source: Agenda Europe

  

According to Mr. Tarabella, abortion is a “right” that must be granted in order to ensure the “equality” of men and women. His draft is worded as follows:

The European Parliament …… Maintains that women must have control over their sexual and reproductive rights, not least by having ready access to contraception and abortion; accordingly supports measures and actions to improve women’s access to sexual and reproductive health services and inform them more fully about their rights and the services available; calls on the Member States and the Commission to implement measures and actions to make men aware of their responsibilities for sexual and reproductive matters;

The proposal is not only contrary to human rights (in particular the right to life of children before birth), but in fact it is also in contradiction to the “equality between men and women” that Mr. Tarabella pretends to safeguard. If he had his will, then fathers would have no right to prevent their child from being slaughtered; it would be the mother’s decision alone.

This is, sadly, the legal situation in many European countries. However, the EU has no competence to allow or prohibit abortion, which falls under the exclusive legislative competence of Member States.

FEMM is the only EP committee that has no control over any legislative matters in the strict sense of the word, but only produces non-binding political prose. This is the reason why MEPs can be members of FEMM without foregoing the possibility of being members of two further committees. 

This being so, the Committee is a playground for, on the one side, some pretty radical feminist who lack more interesting career perspectives and, on the other hand, some dedicated conservative MEP who believe it necessary to prevent nonsense from being adopted even if it is not legally binding. The days were radical pro-abortion messages could be slid into draft initiative reports may by now be over; however, the first group is in a structural majority, which explains why FEMM proposals usually leave the committee with an unabatedly extremist content.

Besides promoting the killing of babies, the Tarabella Draft also suffers from many other flaws of which we will inform our readers in further course. Those interested may find the Draft as well as the amendments proposed by other Members of the FEMM Committee (Nr. 1 – 108 and Nr. 109 – 249) on the EP’s website.