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Abortion, a right that is also faltering in Europe

2023-01-03T11:04:31.477Z


In 2022, the United States took a big step back by reversing a landmark ruling that guaranteed the right to freely terminate a pregnancy. Politicians and experts warn that Europe is not immune to these setbacks


The green scarf that has become a symbol of the fight for the right to abortion in Latin America has been worn around the neck of more than one European politician in recent months.

A woman's right to decide over her body suffered a major setback in 2022 around the world with the United States Supreme Court decision to strike down

Roe v. Wade .

, which served as the legal basis for the voluntary interruption of pregnancy since 1973, which demonstrated that this social and feminist conquest was not irrevocable.

Nor is Europe immune to this wave of regression, which could undermine a hard-won right and take with it other fundamental freedoms along the way.

Because the attacks on the right to abortion, warn many voices, are only a first step or a symptom of something potentially much more serious.

"We are in a battle between governments that are much more totalitarian, which are using the policies of equality, the rights and freedoms of women to advance their totalitarian and autocratic agenda in their countries," says the MEP from Ciudadanos Soraya Rodríguez, a member of the Committee on Women's Rights and Equality of the European Parliament.

The most denounced example is Poland, which two years ago imposed laws so restrictive on abortion that they imply a total

de facto

ban on this right until then guaranteed, even with limitations.

At least six women have died since the change in the law, though activists are convinced there are many more, as restrictions force many to opt for clandestine and unsafe abortions.

Along with the United States, Poland has the dubious honor of being one of four countries in the world — in addition to El Salvador and Nicaragua — that have backtracked on abortion rights since 1994, according to the NGO Center for Reproductive Rights.

But the Polish government is not the only one trying to limit a practice that goes beyond a woman's right to decide freely about her body.

In September, the government of Viktor Orbán in Hungary issued a decree by which women who want an abortion will be obliged to "listen to the fetal heartbeat" before being able to terminate their pregnancy.

The director for Europe of the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF), Caroline Hickson, points to Romania and Slovakia as other "concerning" countries, where "another attempt to restrict access" to abortion is taking place.

And the arrival in the Government of Italy of the also ultra Giorgia Meloni, closely aligned with Orbán in defense of the "traditional family values", makes many activists fear that the anti-abortion alliance is no longer just a problem for Eastern countries .

Because, as Hickson warns, in order to have the "full picture" of the European situation of the right to abortion, it is also necessary to analyze "how accessible" access to that right is in practice.

“In many EU countries where abortion is legal, women face unacceptable obstacles in accessing this care,” she notes by email.

In 2021, IPPF produced an "atlas of abortion policies in Europe" where it analyzed the situation of 52 European countries and territories.

Their diagnosis: in 31, abortion is not covered by social security, which penalizes the most vulnerable women above all;

Nineteen countries, "including several known for their progressive views," force women to undergo unnecessary medical requirements before they can have an abortion, such as mandatory waiting periods or sometimes "partisan" counseling.

In addition, 16 European countries continue to regulate abortion primarily through their criminal or penal code, which, IPPF warns, "stigmatizes the procedure."

In 26, health workers can claim their right to conscientious objection, which "potentially puts women in grave danger."

Finally,

Currently, Malta is the only country in the EU where abortion is totally prohibited, although a bill to allow some cases is progressing (slowly) in Parliament and is expected to be approved this 2023. Beyond the Twenty-seven, there are other European countries that continue to prohibit or severely limit the voluntary interruption of pregnancy: in Andorra it is also totally prohibited, while in Liechtenstein or Monaco the laws in this regard are “extremely restrictive”, recalls Hickson.

For the MEP and jurist María Eugenia Rodríguez Palop (Unidas Podemos), there are three major risks for a right that many Europeans (and Americans) believed irreversible: there is the "regression with respect to what already exists", as has happened in Poland or Hungary and it could happen in Italy or Sweden, where the arrival of a government supported by the extreme right also causes concern among feminists for whom this country, which now assumes the presidency of the EU, was exemplary.

There is also the risk "not of going back, but of not advancing in the right direction, which is also a form of going backwards," says Palop.

And a third "enormous" danger, she warns, is "going back on the concept of family" and trying to impose the idea of ​​"natural family", where "the most important thing is the woman as her mother",

through which "racist and xenophobic policies associated with the great replacement theory are articulated: Europeans must have children to prevent immigrants from replacing us."

All this with a religious element, "women as guarantor of traditional uses and customs associated with a classical vision of the Church".

Thus, Palop alerts, the family "becomes a central element not only of anti-feminist policies, but of others that identify the extreme right."

The good news is that it's not all setbacks.

The French National Assembly took the first step in November to enshrine the right to abortion in the Constitution.

Although it is not certain that the project will pass the entire legislative process, it is a strong message.

Like the one sent by the European Parliament this summer when it approved, just two weeks after the US Supreme Court setback, a resolution calling for the right to "safe and legal" abortion to also be enshrined in the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the EU, which includes the civil, political, economic and social rights of Europeans.

For this to happen, the unanimity of the 27 EU countries is required, something impossible today, its promoters acknowledge.

However, it represents an important precedent and political gesture, they defend.

“The overturning of

Roe v. Wade

in the United States was a strong warning to Europeans that hard-won protections for women's rights cannot be taken for granted,” Hickson notes.

At least, she celebrates, "we are seeing an awakening among feminists, youth and progressive parties aware that rights and equality are at risk if citizens do not mobilize in their defense."

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Source: elparis

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