Hungary has for years been developing policies in favor of babies, life, and families. However, it still has a law on the books that allows abortion up to the 12th week of pregnancy, a defect that the government of Prime Minister Viktor Orban and pro-life President Katalina Novak are taking steps to correct.
With that goal in mind, on September 13, the Hungarian Minister of the Interior, Sandor Pinte, signed a decree amending Hungary's Law on the protection of fetal life.
This decree added a new requirement to the state-mandated abortion request form. The essence of the amendment, as reported by Mandiner ,[1] a Hungarian political news site, requires that before a pregnant woman can request an abortion, she must present a document issued by an obstetrician-gynecologist certifying that she has been presented with a clear "identification of the vital signs of the fetus."
According to Hungary Today [2], "fetal vital sign identification" means being given the opportunity to listen to her unborn child's heartbeat. As the BBC reported, Abortionists "will have to submit a report confirming that this has been done."[3]
According to the Telex website[4], the Hungarian Ministry of the Interior announced that the College of Health Professionals had adopted a new guideline on the determination and classification of pregnancies in the earliest stages of life. "Research shows that nearly two-thirds of Hungarians associate the beginning of a child's life with the first heartbeat," it read. "Heartbeats can be detected early in pregnancy using modern tools, and the guideline recommends a more complete range of information for pregnant women," it continued.
Now that women deserve to hear their child's heartbeat, the pro-abortion media and other groups have reacted to Hungary's new law by calling it an "imposition," as if mothers should be denied the truth about the life in their wombs.
Like the American politician, Stacy Abrams, they deny that babies at six weeks even have a heartbeat, much less a right to life.
Major media on the continent began to attack the new policy immediately. Newspapers such as El Pais of Spain (6) and the BBC of London (7) declared that the law would have a negative impact on the "psychology" of women, without mentioning the unborn child.
But perhaps most striking of all is that on September 14 the European Parliament, in language never before utilized by the body, approved a report declaring that Hungary is no longer a full democracy and that the rights of its citizens are under threat (8). The resolution concocts a fictional category - Hungary is now a "hybrid regime of electoral autocracy" - and authorizes the Parliament's entire bureaucratic apparatus to interfere with the normal functioning of Hungary's institutions, including the country's access to European funds.
So we have two events: Hungary establishes a "heartbeat rule," and the European Parliament passes a malicious resolution. The inattentive observer might see no connection between these two events, but the timing is hardly a coincidence.
Unfortunately, the bureaucratic thugs in Brussels have been putting pressure on the brave people of Hungary for years, and the Parliament's resolution simply represents another instance of that intrusive pressure.
Will Hungary relent? Doubtful. Prime Minister Viktor Orban and pro-life President Katalina Novak are far ahead of their EU colleagues whose heads have long been buried deep in the sand regarding the population crisis in which the whole of Europe is mired.
Hungary's new policy represents a promising advance in the great battle between the culture of life and the culture of death.
Bravo to Hungary... once again. Our advice to President Novak? Go tell the EU bureaucrats to pound sand.