Fine Gael MEPs are set to support an amendment to the EU Budget which would prevent funding going to “coercive abortion, involuntary sterilization or infanticide”. The amendment is opposed by the National Council of Women in Ireland (NCWI).
A vote is also set to take place to an amendment which calls on Parliament to ensure that projects funded by the EU do not support gender-based abortion or infanticide.
However, the amendments to the Budget, tabled by MEPs from the Nirj Deva and Konrad Szymanski from the European Conservatives and Reformists group, are being opposed by EU womens’ groups, including the 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 first amendment calls on the European Parliament to ensure that no EU money goes “to any authority, organization or programme which supports or participates in the management of an action which involves such human rights abuses as coercive abortion, involuntary sterilisation or infanticide, especially where such actions apply their priorities though psychological, social, economic or legal pressure”.
The second amendment say that EU-funded projects under its External relations, Enlargement, Humanitarian Aid and Development and relations with African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) States “must not pursue gender-based eugenic discrimination, which is increasingly common in certain countries, or any other form of discrimination against girls (at any point after conception)”
However the EWL argues that these 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”.
The vote is set for today.
