Is it acceptable for an EU Commissioner, in an interview with an Irish newspaper, to give public backing to abortion with a referendum looming and given that the issue does not fall within the jurisdiction of the EU? Well, if the shoe was on the other foot, what would the reaction have been? The Commissioner would have been told to steer clear of a matter that is none of her business as a commissioner.
The official in question is EU Competition Commissioner, Margrethe Vestager (pictured). Asked about the abortion issue by The Irish Independent, her answer should have been that, ‘as an EU Commissioner, it was not my place to give an answer’.
How would Ms Vestager view it if Ireland’s EU Commissioner, Phil Hogan, turned up in her native Denmark and gave strongly pro-life views to a newspaper there? (Not that he would, of course).
In any event, instead of keeping her counsel, Ms Vestager said the following: “It [abortion] is never a thing that comes easy but it gives you a right to your own body as a woman, to which you are otherwise deprived”. This is the classic pro-choice position.
She said that in her country people are “very respectful and careful” about the matter, which is to say, there is no debate about it.
She even claimed that permitting abortion is actually pro-family. “We think about it as a way to make sure that you are having children when you want to have children, and not when they come in a way when you haven’t chosen it for yourself.”
Ms Vestager said that the family is at the core of Danish society: “That is the only thing that really matters; other people, especially the ones you have a relationship with”.
Denmark is often held up as a model to the rest of the world. It is certainly a country feminists applaud precisely because the abortion debate has all but ended there – in favour of abortion.
Ms Vestager was not asked about the fact that her country has an abortion rate which amounts to one pregnancy in every five, which is the same as in the UK. Is it really a ‘progressive’ thing that so many human lives end in abortion? What happened to ‘safe, legal and rare’, which was once the mantra of the pro-choice movement?
Nor was Ms Vestager asked about the horrific situation whereby almost all disabled children in Denmark – including those with Down Syndrome – are aborted. Is eugenics now a mark of ‘progress’?
And is a society really ‘pro-family’ that has a very high rate of divorce and relationship breakdown?
Finally, how can anyone argue with a straight face that killing a child in the womb is ‘pro-family’? The family is supposed to protect children, not dispose of some for the supposed benefit of others.
It is obvious reading Ms Vestager’s comments that she is rarely challenged on the abortion issue and her own country has sunk so deep into a pro-choice mentality that is it no longer willing to consider whether a high abortion rate might be a bad thing, and eugenics simply barbaric.
