Published on
One hundred and five members of the European Parliament sent a letter on Wednesday to the Commission’s President Ursula von der Leyen, asking for a European-funded pathway that ensures real and effective access to abortions.
ADVERTISEMENT
ADVERTISEMENT
The letter aims to put pressure on the Commission, the day before the decision on the European Citizens’ Initiative “My Voice, My Choice”, which collected 1,124,513 signatures across all 27 countries and asked to improve access to safe abortion in Europe.
This initiative calls to establish financial support to perform safe termination of pregnancies for women abroad their countries, claiming that the lack of access to abortion in some EU member states puts women at risk of physical harm and mental stress and leads them to seek unsafe abortions.
EU institutions are obliged to assess any initiative that gets the support of at least 1 million people across at least seven EU countries.
The European Commission has a timeframe to either set out legislative measures or provide justification for not doing so, and its answer is expected on Thursday.
The European Parliament has the obligation to discuss the initiative, and so did last year, leading to a non-binding resolution approved last December, which calls for an EU fund to help women without access to safe and legal abortion in their countries.
The Parliament’s text envisages a solidarity mechanism enabling EU states to provide access to the termination of pregnancies for any woman who is legally barred from doing so in her home country.
Now, some of the MEPs who have supported the resolution want the Commission to act. The letter was signed mostly by lawmakers from Socialists and Democrats (S&D), Greens/EFA and The Left groups, with a few Renew Europe and one European People’s Party members who joined the call.
“We want the Commission to establish a financial mechanism that allows women to have the same treatment, regardless of which country they are coming from”, Slovenian S&D MEP Matjaž Nemec, who promoted the letter, told Euronews.
His office estimates that an amount between three and seven million euros per year would be enough to set up this fund, which would basically cover the costs for EU countries’ medical systems to perform abortions for European women living in other countries.
“The inequalities between Member States continue to create unjust differences and expose individuals to unsafe and discriminatory conditions”, reads the letter. Signing MEPs also say that they are “ready to examine further political and legal avenues” if the Commission will not meet the initiative supporters’ expectations.
Other MEPs do not agree with this push. Spanish far-right party Vox also sent a letter to von der Leyen and EU Commissioner for Equality Hadja Lahbib, asking them to refrain from “financing cross-border abortions with public money”, and calling the European Citizens’ Initiative “politically influenced”.
According to the European Abortion Policies Atlas 2025, several EU countries have taken steps to guarantee the right to safe abortions, while others have recorded new restrictions, increased harassment of abortion providers, and the spread of disinformation on the topic.
