Published: 17.10.2013
A resolution on “Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights” (SRHR) will be debated and put to a vote on the 22nd October in the European Parliament.
This resolution, introduced by the Portuguese Socialist Deputy Edite Estrela, was adopted by the Committee on “Women’s Rights and Gender Equality” on the 18th September.
The text was written by Vicky Claeys, President of the European Section of the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF), who publicly claimed to have written the document in her 19th June IPPF presentation to the European Parliament on women’s access to modern methods of contraception.
This resolution promotes abortion as a fundamental right, attacks the right to conscientious objection, the rights of parents, and calls on the European Union to fund abortion in its Foreign and Development Aid Policy. This text calls for more abortions and less rights for conscientious objectors and parents; it recommends nothing in relation to the prevention of abortion or support for pregnant women.
This draft resolution opposes head-on the European Citizens' Initiative One of Us which is supported by more than 1.2 million people in Europe, specifically asking the European Union to stop funding abortion and industrial and scientific practices which involve the destruction of human embryos.
The draft resolution goes beyond the power and competences of the European Union which has repeatedly recognized that "Considering the ethical, social and cultural dimension of abortions, it is for Member States to develop and implement their policies and legal frameworks. The Commission does not have the intention to complement national health policies in this respect." (Answer given by Mr Dalli on behalf of the Commission, 30th April 2012).
The European People's Party (EPP), the majority party of the centre-right, has not yet firmly opposed itself to this text. We must write the president, French MEP Joseph Daul, a member of the UMP (French centre-right party), and ask him to the reject the resolution.
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On February 13, the Court of Appeals in Warsaw overturned an earlier verdict convicting Justyna Wydrzyńska, a well-known abortion activist from the so-called Abortion Dream Team, of assisting in a medical abortion.
In March 2023, the Warsaw-Praga Regional Court had sentenced this activist to community service for giving abortion pills to a woman who was pregnant with twins. It was a high-profile case that was reported in the international media.
• The trial of Justyna Wydrzyńska, an activist from the Abortion Dream Team group who was convicted of aiding and abetting a medical abortion, took place in the Court of Appeals in Warsaw.
• The European Parliament will debate the draft recommendations of the EU Committee on Women’s Rights and Gender Equality (FEMM).
On November 8, the Polish Sejm voted on a bill decriminalizing both the performance and the aiding and abetting of illegal abortions. The Left’s radically pro-abortion bill was thus sent for further parliamentary work.
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