The right to safe and legal abortion

We need access to safe and legal abortions. The situation in the US has shown that women’s rights are still used for a conservative agenda at the cost of the well-being of our women. We need to anchor these rights in the core EU treaties.

For a while now, the fundamental rights of women and their body autonomy have been at stake in the EU. This does not come as a surprise, as some governments in the EU have been taking very conservative stands on many issues.

The freedom of media, the space for civil society, and the fundamental women’s rights have been openly questioned and discussed. The populist and conservative narrative has taken many turns and it seems we need to fight harder for these rights we hold so close to our hearts.

Roe v Wade in the United States was a wake-up call for many others, while for us it had been a recognition of the patterns, we identified a longtime ago. 

Unfortunately, the ultra-conservative agenda seems fine with targeting women, that makeup 50% of the population in the EU and worldwide. We just have been finalizing the negotiations with the EU member states to implement effective pay transparency laws, in which women earn on average less than 14% than their male counterparts.

You can compare it to winning one battle at one front and being confronted with the same battle you won before at another front. This way of doing politics is far from desirable and hurts many people and processes inside the EU.

Let us be clear. Your life, your choice. Your body, your choice. These are fundamental Human Rights that are discussed but should not be discussed. The narrative that we are therefore against free speech is utterly false and shameful.

Human Rights cannot be negotiated in a union of values. It sets a dangerous pretense to discuss other values and rights we have fought hard for so far because they were not obvious while they were nothing but natural. 

That is why we want to keep fighting for anchoring these fundamental rights to a woman’s bodily autonomy. Access to safe and legal abortions should be the norm everywhere and women should be able to have a choice whether they want to undergo a safe and legal abortion or not. But taking away that choice is far from justified.

Join us to anchor these rights in the EU treaties!