The most recent citizens’ initiative calling for EU financial support for safe and accessible abortion was not up for vote in the elections to the European Parliament but will require the support of the new Parliament.
As previously reported, a citizens committee based in Slovenia, ‘My Voice, My Choice’, launched a campaign last April for affordable abortion in all EU member states. The committee highlighted that there are still 20 million women in the EU who lack access to safe abortion care.
While some countries have taken steps to protect access to abortion, such as France which recently enshrined the right to abortion in its constitution, far-right parties in other countries are rallying against reproductive rights.
The European Citizens Initiative (ECI), entitled 'My Voice, My Choice: For Safe And Accessible Abortion', was registered by the European Commission on 10 April. The lack of access to abortion in many parts of Europe not only puts women at risk of physical harm but also puts undue economic and mental stress on women and families, often on the margins of society that can afford it the least.
To change this, the ECI is asking the European Commission - in the spirit of solidarity – to submit a proposal for financial support to member states that would be able to perform safe termination of pregnancies for anyone in Europe who still lacks access to safe and legal abortion in their home country.
What it now takes for the Commission to submit a legislative proposal on this is that the ECI collects at least 1 million signatures in at least seven EU countries within one year from the start of the campaign. That should not be impossible. Almost half a million Europeans have already signed the initiative. But the process afterwards can be cumbersome, with no success guaranteed.
To gauge the opinions of the political party groups in the European Parliament, the citizens committee sent a survey to all of them before the elections. The results were mixed and not always promising. Only Social-Democrats, Liberal, Green, and left-wing parties replied that they are in favour of enacting legislation in line with the ECI.
Other parties did not even bother to reply to the survey. Among them were not only far-right party groups, such as European Conservatives and Reformist (ECR) and Identity and Democracy (ID), but also the biggest party group, the center-right European People’s Party (EPP). The EPP is also the group of European Commission President von der Leyen, the lead candidate to the post after the elections.
“It’s no secret that national political parties associated with parties like ID and ECR are attacking reproductive rights in national contexts, as we can see in Poland, Germany, Italy, Croatia and elsewhere,” commented Kristina Krajnc before the elections on behalf of the My Voice, My Choice movement.
Data: European Parliament. Credit: The Brussels Times
The far-right parties saw a lift in support – in some countries such as France they even received most of the votes – but their bloc is still lagging far behind the centre-liberal-left bloc. Together (EPP, S&D, Renew Europe, Greens/EFA and the Left) got a reassuring majority of ca 68 % of the 720 seats in the new parliament according to the latest provisional elections results.
M. Apelblat
The Brussels Times
