On July 7, 2022, the European Parliament passed a Resolution on abortion. In a rare move, the Resolution criticized a domestic decision of the United States, specifically the Supreme Court's ruling in the Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health case.
Of course, being only a Resolution , it is not even binding on EU member countries, much less on the United States.
Nonetheless, the Resolution is important. It is properly understood as a reaction to the fear that the Dobbs decision has engendered among the members of the pro-abortion movement. They realize all too well that the landmark decision might well generate a "ripple effect" across the world, with the passage of other laws that protect the unborn. Their aggressive response reflects the urgency they feel to stop this from happening.
It is striking to witness the European Parliament criticizing so forcefully the decisions of another country that is not only a democracy, but the EU's closest ally.
The Resolution, in its very first article, directly addresses the United States and the decision of the Supreme Court. The EU Parliament "Strongly condemns once again the backsliding in women's rights and Sexual and Reproductive Health Rights (SRHR) taking place globally, including in the U.S." (Article 1).
If this interference were not enough, the Resolution goes on to propose that the EU "use all instruments at their disposal to strengthen their actions to counteract the backsliding in women's rights and SRHR, including by compensating for any possible reduction in US funding to SRHR globally, and by strongly advocating and prioritizing universal access to safe and legal abortion and other SRHR in their external relations" (Article 14).
Behaving like a run-of-the-mill U.S. lobbying firm, the European Parliament "supports, likewise, the calls for the U.S. Congress to pass a bill protecting abortion at federal level."
The Resolution's Article 13 is simply preposterous; it "Recommends that a delegation to the U.S. be organized as soon as possible to evaluate the impact of the Supreme Court's decision and to support women's rights, NGO's, and pro-choice movements in the country."
We note that when such delegations are constituted at all, they are usually sent to countries with a low level of democracy that are, in many cases, on the brink of civil war. The proposal is so bizarre that it is highly unlikely that the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs will form such a commission.
But the mere suggestion that the Parliament should approve such a misguided text at all speaks volumes about the fear provoked by the Dobbs opinion and the power of the abortion lobby among the Brussels bureaucracy.
The few deputies who intervened in the debate to support this Resolution spoke of seeking to guarantee the "human right to reproductive health and abortion." The problem is that progressives have been saying for 40 years that reproductive health does not include abortion. They have used that ploy again and again to attack the Mexico City Policy and other anti-abortion efforts.
Now they have taken off the mask. They are openly acknowledging that reproductive health and abortion are synonymous.
There is another problem as well. No international charter, law, or regulation recognizes abortion as a human right. Thus, this Resolution also calls for the amendment of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union to include "freedom for abortion without cost," as French President Macron requested a few weeks ago.
In other words, the European Parliament Resolution, in addition to attacking the U.S. Supreme Court's Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health decision, also calls on EU authorities to amend the EU's basic document to include abortion as a "right."
Such an amendment would require the unanimous support of EU member countries. As things stand today, however, several member countries oppose such a change.
For example, the Government of Malta has made it clear that it will remain in the EU only so long that it is not forced to approve abortion.
But Hungary and Poland are also strongly opposed to an approval of the bogus "right to abortion." The pro-abortion lobby knows that it does not have all the votes it needs, but it continues to exert pressure. Like pro-abortion forces everywhere, they seek victory in the long term.
The Spanish Deputy Margarita de la Pisa, from the conservative VOX party, tried to insert some common sense with three amendments that she proposed to the bill. Her amendments (1) stressed that the European Union has no competence over policies related to sexual health and rights and abortion at the national or international level; (2) recalled that interfering in the democratic judicial decisions of other countries, such as the United States, is an unacceptable intrusion; and (3) noted that the United States is sovereign as far as its own legislative and judicial decisions are concerned. Unfortunately, these amendments failed to pass.
In the end, 324 deputies voted in favor of the final form of the Resolution while 155 voted against.
Two important details are mentioned by our sources within the European Parliament. One is that very few Members participated in the debate, although in the end 324 voted in favor of the Resolution.
Which is to say there was no real debate on this Resolution. Perhaps the reason for this lack of debate was that very few Members were familiar with the text of the draft, except for the negotiators - an all too common experience on America's own Capitol Hill as well.
We also note that the draft of the Resolution was posted on the web late on July 6 and the final vote was held the next day. This lack of transparency does not speak well for a system that considers itself democratic, especially when the legislation under consideration pretends to instruct the government of a fully democratic country like the United States.
In the light of history, the EU's Resolution is both feeble and offensive. Eight decades ago, the United States sent millions of men to defend European democracy. One lifetime later, the action of the European Parliament flies in the face of that legacy.
Here we have the EU having the gall to propose sending a commission to the United States to challenge its sovereignty and the character of its democratic republic, all the while promoting the culture of death.
At the end of the day, we must acknowledge that the abortion ideology is deeply rooted in many of Europe's elites as well as its people. It not only promotes the death of the unborn, but also, like all ideologies, seeks to wipe out the memory of the history and spirit of an entire continent and its traditions of honoring the value of every human life.