The
European Parliament, composed of legislators representing the 28 Member
States of the European Union, voted today to adopt the Annual Report on Human Rights and Democracy Around the World 2013,
including paragraphs promoting access to abortion as a fundamental
right but which also recognize sex selection abortion as violence
against women and girls.
The "Panzeri Report"-named
for Italian MEP Pier Antonio Panzeri, of the Progressive Alliance of
Socialists and Democrats (S&D group)-was adopted during the plenary
session in Strasbourg by a vote of 390 to 151 with 97 abstentions.
The vote follows adoption on Tuesday of another non-binding report, the "Tarabella report", which presents access
to abortion as a fundamental right and as part of sexual and
reproductive health and rights (SRHR) but also affirms the right of EU
Member States to determine national policy on SRHR issues.
The
"Panzeri Report" however, makes no mention of the long standing
principle of subsidiarity whereby countries in the EU determine their
own laws on abortion and instead expresses opposition to sovereign laws
that protect women and children from the violence of abortion stating:
"136.
Finds it regrettable that women's and girls' bodies, specifically with
respect to their sexual and reproductive health and rights, still remain
an ideological battleground, and calls for the EU and its Member States
to recognise the inalienable rights of women and girls to bodily
integrity and autonomous decision-making as regards, inter alia, the
right to access voluntary family planning and safe and legal abortion
and to be free from violence, including female genital mutilation,
child, early and forced marriage, and marital rape;"
The
inclusion of a action-abortion- that denies children their most basic
right-the right to life-mars a human rights report that contains many
important sections on pressing human rights violations.
Most
significantly, the report recognizes sex selection abortion as violence
against women and girls stating in paragraph 142 of the section Rights of women and girls:
"Calls
on the Council to include the issue of 'gender-selected' abortion in
the EU Guidelines concerning violence against women and girls;
encourages the Commission and the Council to develop data-gathering
methods and indicators on this phenomenon, and encourages the EEAS to
include this issue in the development and implementation of the human
rights country strategies;"
The
inclusion of sex selection abortion in country human rights strategies
is a positive step toward reducing the number of baby girls who are
identified as "little women" in the womb and lose their lives as a
result. Indeed, the denial of the right to life to pre-born girls is a
human rights violation, as is the denial of the right to life to any
pre-born child for any reason.
PNCI
wonders how the "Panzeri Report" can get it so right and recognize the
violence of abortion based on prenatal sex determination but can get it
so wrong in calling for access in EU Member States to this same violence
for any reason, or no reason, in the name of women's and girls' "autonomous decision-making".