Planned Parenthood Wants European Union to Legalize Abortion 
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by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
September 4, 2007
Brussels, Belgium (LifeNews.com) — Not content that Portugal is the latest to legalize abortion, a top abortion business has published a new action plan saying it wants the European Union to make abortion legal throughout the continent. International Planned Parenthood’s document comes days after one promoting abortion in Latin America.
The European branch of the leading abortion business recently issued a document titled "Why We Need to Talk about Abortion" calling for the legalization of abortion continent-wide.
Planned Parenthood complains that the nations of Malta, Ireland, Poland, Portugal and Slovakia still make it difficult for women to get abortions — with the first three prohibiting them.
Maciej Golubiewski of the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute, a pro-life group that lobbies at the United Nations, writes about the document in the group’s Friday Fax publication.
The action plan contains strongly anti-religious language, perhaps because of the influential presence of the Catholic Church in Rome.
"The IPPF document also illustrates that abortion advocates believe that linking the pro-life cause with religion will help promote abortion rights," Golubiewski says. "IPPF has clearly taken sides in the debate about religious freedom in Europe."
The CFAM analyst says Planned Parenthood tries to use the stories of six women to justify its call for legalized abortion throughout Europe.
"One story is of a Slovakian woman who aborts her child and is supposedly castigated by a Catholic priest during Sunday Mass, though there is no substantiation for such a claim. The story ends with her Catholic husband leaving her," she said.
In the document, Planned Parenthood admits that the EU member states retain “ultimate responsibility” for the legality of abortion, but IPPF-Europe urges the EU Commission and members of the EU parliament to act “despite this mandate” to “drive the issues forward” and “keep them high on the political agenda.”
Golubiewski says the document praises the EU parliament and the Council of Europe for issued two non-binding resolutions in recent years calling for more abortions. It also quotes the "Van Lancker Report" of the European Parliament, issued by a leading Dutch governmental official, saying abortion should be more available.
"IPPF also mentions the EU Commission’s support for the conclusions of the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD)," Golubiewski explained. "Although the Cairo document makes no call for abortion, pro-abortion advocates claim that Cairo’s call for ‘reproductive health’ is synonymous with abortion, something the UN General Assembly never intended or voted for."
Golubiewski says that IPPF calls unplanned pregnancies a "shock" for women and something leading to “clear-cut panic." It says women in Europe should have the right “to choose what to do with their bodies" despite the loss of life in abortions.
"It should be noted that most countries of the European Union have more limitations on abortion than the United States where there is abortion on demand," Golubiewski explains. "Most European countries have fairly conservative gestational limits on abortion, and some EU countries ban abortion outright."
"While the European Institutions have repeatedly said that abortion lies outside their competence and should be left to the individual, this recent IPPF campaign shows that pro-abortion organizations consider the institutions of the EU as useful lobbying targets to put the “right to abortion” on the EU agenda," Golubiewski concludes.
Related web sites:
Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute – https://www.c-fam.org
