So-called human rights groups across the world demanded Wednesday that European governments expand access to abortions in response to the coronavirus pandemic.
In a joint statement, the pro-abortion groups urged government leaders to deregulate abortions during the crisis to allow at-home abortions, halt informed consent requirements, let midwives do early abortions and potentially force pro-life doctors and nurses to participate in the life-destroying practice.
Leaders of the campaign include Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, International Planned Parenthood Federation, Center for Reproductive Rights and IPAS.
“Many women and girls in Europe are struggling to safely access abortion care during the pandemic as barriers caused by highly restrictive abortion laws and onerous administrative requirements to access abortion services make safe access to this essential health care extremely difficult,” Amnesty International said in the statement.
The pro-abortion groups lamented that hospitals and other medical facilities are limiting elective abortions to focus on conroavirus patients.
“Many hospitals and clinics have reduced reproductive health services to a bare minimum, or closed altogether due to staff shortages and reassignments, among other reasons. In many places, accessing normal clinical services has become extremely difficult,” the statement continued.
Leah Hoctor, regional director for Europe for the Center for Reproductive Rights, urged European governments to “swiftly eradicate” basically every regulation and restriction on abortion – even though these laws protect women as well as unborn babies.
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Informed consent laws, for example, help ensure women know all the facts, risks and options before going through with an abortion. Requirements that abortions be done by doctors in medical facilities, rather than at home or by midwives, also protect women.
But women’s health and unborn babies’ lives would not be the only things jeopardized by the pro-abortion groups’ demands. Pro-life doctors and nurses could see their conscience rights stripped away, too.
Among its list of demands, Human Rights Watch asked that “urgent steps … be taken to ensure that refusals of care because of private beliefs by doctors do not jeopardize timely access to legal abortion care.”
It asked governments to “guarantee an adequate number of providers willing and able to provide abortion care throughout the country and widely publicize information on how women can identify health care professionals willing and available to provide abortion care” and “urgently ensure that refusals of care by doctors do not jeopardize access to abortion care in a time of crisis.”
In their joint statement, the pro-abortion groups also slammed the European countries that recognize unborn babies are valuable human beings who deserve protection. They are Andorra, Liechtenstein, Malta, Monaco, Poland and San Marino.
“Particularly grave barriers are arising for women and girls living in European countries where abortion care is illegal or severely restricted, and where as a result they must travel to other countries to access legal care or must obtain abortion medication from outside their own jurisdiction,” according to Human Rights Watch.
The so-called human rights groups claimed to be concerned about women in poverty, illegal immigrants, women with disabilities, abuse victims and adolescents. But abortion, the destruction of a unique, living human being, is not the answer to these problems, nor is it essential for women’s health.
Human rights should be protected for all human beings, not just those already born. And during this global crisis, if at no other time, all of society’s efforts should be going into saving lives, not destroying them.
