Amendments to the EU Budget which would have explicitly prevented projects funded by the EU going towards coercive abortion and sex-selective abortion failed to secure enough votes to be approved yesterday.
There were 316 votes against Amendment 733, which would have explicitly prevented funding of coercive abortion, with 305 MEPs voting for the amendment.
In the case of Amendment 732, which would have prevented EU funding being used for projects which fund sex selective abortions, there were 300 votes against and 304 votes for.
However, at this stage a majority of 365 votes would have been needed to pass the amendments.
The amendments were opposed by the National Council of Women in Ireland (NCWI). In a letter to its members, the NCWI makes clear its support for a lobby campaign by the European Women’s Lobby (EWL) which opposes these amendments on the grounds that they are part of a ‘wider agenda’.
The EWL argued that the amendments would mean that “independent agencies which promote a rights-based approach to sexual and reproductive health in countries where there is an authoritarian regime may be held responsible, by association, of the human rights abuses of that regime in the field of sexual and reproductive health and rights”.
Groups such as International Planned Parenthood Federation have been involved in giving assistance to the Communist government of China in their coercive population control programme.
The EWL also opposes the amendment which refers to gender-based eugenic discrimination, on the basis that “it seeks to lay a basis for considering that a foetus has rights from the ‘moment of conception’ and therefore undermine national provisions which regulate access to termination of pregnancy as well to emergency contraception”.
The EWL also argues that the phrase “at any point after conception” used in the amendment “is a phrase used by some extremist, religiously-inspired groups and individuals who oppose access to legal abortion”.
Both Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael MEPs voted for the amendments, as did Independent MEP Marian Harkin. The three Labour MEPs, Nessa Childers, Prionsias De Rossa and Alan Kelly, and Socialist MEP Joe Higgins, voted against the amendments.
