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“We don’t need hard law; we only need a movement for EU competency on abortion.”
by Tim Van Hal
The European Parliament held a meeting on July 12, 2011 in order to discuss the possibility of strengthening “sexual and reproductive health and rights” (SRHR) in the EU. Eva-Britt Svensson, MEP, the Chair of the Committee on Women’s Rights and Gender Equality, hosted the meeting and Wanda Nowicka, Coordinator of the ASTRA Network, a network advocating for sexual and reproductive rights in Central and Eastern Europe, was the distinguished guest who did the lion’s share of the presenting and question-answering.
The purpose of the meeting was to discuss the report most recently released by the ASTRA Network, a report entitled the “Current Status and Directions for Advancement of Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights in Central and Eastern Europe.” The conclusion of the report was as follows: SRHR must officially and explicitly include access to legal abortions. In our report on the meeting we illustrate and analyze the strategic steps SRHR proponents wish to take in order to achieve this goal.
Discussion of the Report
Ms. Nowicka discussed the report in detail, including providing a summary of the current trends occurring throughout Europe and particularly throughout Eastern Europe. She discussed the deplorable “negative trends” of those political actors on the Community level who have expressed a need to protect the new Hungarian Constitution, which Ms. Nowicka described as an unforgiveable affront to women’s rights and gender equality as the new Hungarian Constitution protects embryonic and foetal life from the moment of conception.
Ms. Nowicka also reported how misinformation regarding “population-shrinking” is driving the increase in pro-life laws. She criticized the Slovakian government, which has been trying to address the population crisis by increasingly regulating abortion on the “false belief that restricting abortion will make women have more children.” As evidence for this statement, she cited the continually diminishing birth rate in Poland, asserting there is “absolutely no correlation between restricting abortion and the birthrate.” Yet, she glibly avoided the fact that Poland’s birthrate is with 1,29 children per woman not abnormal among the EU countries and that Ireland, which is even stricter on abortion, has the highest birthrate of any EU Member State.
Steps to Promoting SRHR
However, the most important topic discussed was the title of the meeting: ASTRA’s opinion on how to advance abortion. Ms. Nowicka, as spokeswoman for ASTRA, recommended three courses of action.
First, Nowicka asserted that the Community must be compelled to support abortion. “As we all know, there is no hard law on this issue,” but the UN was “very strong on this topic in Cairo and Beijing,” and that strength must be utilized in the EU. Nowicka noted that the ASTRA Network isn’t big enough to do the necessary legal analysis of EU competence but also asserted that launching a full legal challenge, particularly with a link to the Charter for Fundamental Rights, is an essential step. “We don’t need hard law; we only need a movement for EU competency.”
Nowicka was correct in at least one of her assertions: there is indeed no hard law in support of her position. Hard law refers to binding international treaties that the signatories to the treaty must implement, whereas soft law refers to non-binding measures, such as the UN Declaration of Human Rights and communications within the EU. Due to the lack of hard law, abortion advocates try to flood the international community with soft law, thereafter arguing that abortion as a part of “sexual and reproductive rights” has become universally accepted. Also advocates pressure international treaty compliance committees to reinterpret terms of binding treaties so as to include abortion, thereby underhandedly forcing abortion onto countries that agreed to the treaty believing it did not require the provision of abortion. This is the path Nowicka advocates.
Cairo refers to the Programme of Action adopted by the 1994 UN International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo which established a definition of “sexual and reproductive health.” That definition was then repeated verbatim at the 1995 UN Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing (“Beijing”). Organizations such as ASTRA have often used the Cairo definition of “sexual and reproductive health” to argue that abortion on demand should be promoted throughout the world, something the definition itself explicitly condemns. When confronted with this fact by European Dignity Watch, Nowicka had no response other than that abortion must “implicitly” be in the definition.
As acknowledged by Nowicka, the EU has no competence on abortion. Abortion remains strictly the competence of the Member States, a fact repeated on numerous occasions by various members of the European Council and the European Commission. Still, the ASTRA and others seek to start a movement that would result in the EU defying its own founding Treaties by assuming competence over abortion.
Second, Nowicka asserted the importance of “focusing on Cairo. It’s stronger for abortion than the MDGs.”
The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are eight development goals that all UN member states have agreed to achieve by 2015. ASTRA argues that abortion is necessary to most of them, including “Eradicating World Poverty and Hunger,” “Achieving Universal Primary Education,” and “Reducing Child Mortality.” The inclusion of abortion in the MDGs is a weak argument and ASTRA and others have already been much more successful in arguing for the implicit inclusion of abortion in Cairo’s definition of “sexual and reproductive health.”
Third, Nowicka extolled the importance of publishing a major report in 2014 right as Cairo program is concluding and just before the MDGs are due. Once the report is released, NGOs and non-profits are to “hit national governments hard.” Clearly, this intense pressure lobbying from NGOs is a plan to circumvent the national populations and their convictions by using a captured interpretation of international agreement as leverage.
Life not Rights
Ultimately, Ms. Svensson, MEP, concluded the meeting with the simple statement that there are some “fundamentalists” who want nothing more than “life to fetus, death to women.” Despite her public obligation to act within the confines of law, Ms. Svensson explicitly exhorts a political position that is, to say the least, legally questionable. Instead of promoting her own viewpoint, she should respect the democratic structures of our Union by submitting to its laws and by refraining from critiquing those who, by advocating for a universal right to life, already do.
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