(ZENIT News / Brussels, 18.04.2024).- On April 11, the European Parliament approved the defense of women’s right to abortion and called on governments of the Eurozone to legislate so that abortion is “safe and legal,” in addition to including it in the European Union’s Charter of Fundamental Rights.
The proposal is an amendment to article 3 of the European Charter and states that “every person has the right to physical autonomy and free, informed, full and universal health, and sexual and reproductive rights, as well as all related health services, including access to safe and legal abortion without discrimination.” To be noted is that the reference to physical autonomy is based on the widespread error that the baby is a part of the woman’s body, false appreciation that neglects the autonomy of the DNA and physical constitution of the foetus, which are different from those of the mother.
The Parliament also approved insisting that doctors and all European medical institutions deny the acceptance of conscience clauses to perform abortion. One should ask oneself if this request is valid from the principle of freedom and respect of individuals’ conscience.
The initiative was accepted by 336 votes in favour, 163 against and 39 abstentions. Despite the backing of the votes, its implementation won’t be easy, as it requires the unanimous approval of the members of the European Council, where all the countries are represented. If Malta — where abortion is illegal –, or one of the conservative governments of Italy, the Czech Republic or Hungary is opposed, the initiative will disappear.
A statement of the COMECE Bishops of the whole of Europe — the body that brings together the Episcopal Conferences of the European Union –, published on April 9, reiterated the rejection of abortion, as “it can never be a fundamental right” given that it goes “in the opposite direction of the real promotion of women and their rights.”
Monsignor Vincenzo Paglia, President of the Pontifical Academy for Life, said that the resolution shows a “total absence” of the child’s right to be born. “In my opinion it is very grave, both from the cultural as well as the social point of view. And he explained: “It’s a choice that goes backward, not forward. It goes against the respect of all rights, including of the weakest. In the case of the unborn child, who is the weakest, who cannot talk, who cannot claim anything; and it is logical and too easy to affirm the rights of the strongest, forgetting the weakest. It is a mistaken choice to demand a right for only one part, not both.”
“I have many friends, for instance Angelo Vescovi, who is President of the Italian Bioethics Committee, who is against abortion although he is not a believer or a Catholic. The question is simple here: Is it a life that has been generated or not? If it is a life, with what right do I exclude or eliminate it?”
Referring to the ‘Dignitas Infinita’ document, published this week by the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, he reaffirmed: “We are against the death penalty, war, abortion, injustice, the absence of rights in work, the absence of the defense of life, including for those working in terrible conditions. This is what we absolutely must promote: the complete defense of life, beginning by that of the weakest.”
