Council of Europe calls for ‘right’ to abortion on demand
By Simon Caldwell
25 April 2008

Lluis Maria de Puig, the Spanish president of the Council of Europe

The Council of Europe has called for the legalisation of "abortion on demand" in every country on the continent.

Members of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe approved a report urging countries where abortion is either illegal or restricted to grant unlimited access to the controversial procedure.

The report urged 47 member states to "guarantee women's effective exercise of their right to abortion" and to "allow women freedom of choice and offer the conditions of a free and enlightened choice".

The assembly passed the resolution endorsing the report by 102 votes to 69 with 14 abstentions after a short but fierce debate. All amendments seeking to make the report less extreme in its promotion of abortion were rejected.

Jeffrey Orlando of Malta told the plenary session that "a society which destroys its young condemns itself to oblivion".

Cypriot Christos Pourgourides said: "The rights of an unborn child are totally ignored. Abortion is not an unconditional right."

Senator Terry Leyden of Ireland's Fianna Fáil party, and vice-chairman of the assembly's liberal group, said the resolution was partisan, one-sided and based on flawed logic.

Ireland had the lowest maternal mortality in Europe, he said. Other speakers were allowed to exceed their allotted time, but Senator Leyden was promptly stopped from speaking. Joe Costello of the Irish Labour Party went against the socialist consensus by voting pro-life.

But British assembly member Christine McCafferty, the Labour MP for Calder Valley, argued that the practice of abortion had to be safe and legal for the sake of women's health. "If women have no access to legal abortion, they'll resort to illegal means," said Miss McCafferty, a veteran campaigner for abortion rights.

She was supported by Gisela Wurm, an Austrian Socialist who drafted the report and who argued that the denial of abortion rights was a form of violence against women. "The right to decide is a matter of a woman's integrity," she said. "A ban means we're avoiding the issue. It means traumatised women and health risks."

Although the resolution is non-binding it will be used to exert pressure on European governments to bring in liberal abortion laws.

Politicians, lawyers and pro-abortion groups will be able to proclaim the most permissive legislation to be in thinking with the Council of Europe, and governments will be able to justify new abortion laws to hostile electorates by referring to the resolution.

Critics say the resolution is an example of "soft law" that will have a "huge cultural significance" on Europe.

The move comes just weeks before politicians in Westminster will vote on amendments to the 1967 Abortion Act for the first time in 18 years.

It will provide ammunition for MPs seeking to make access to abortion in the Britain even easier. The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill will allow both pro-abortion and pro-life camps a chance to try to change the controversial legislation. Some MPs want to lower the upper time limit of 24 weeks to 20 or less. Others seek to deregulate abortion through the abolition of the requirement of two doctors' consent, and allowing nurses and others to perform early abortions in unlicensed premises, such as GPs' surgeries and private homes. It is also likely that there will be attempts to extend the 1967 Act to Northern Ireland.

Abortion on demand is legal in most European states in the first three months of pregnancy. It is forbidden in Andorra, the Irish Republic, Northern Ireland, Monaco and Poland except in cases where the mother's life is in danger.

Access is also restricted in Britain - where it is available up to 24 weeks only with the approval of two doctors - along with Cyprus, Luxembourg, Spain, Portugal, Finland and Liechtenstein. A total ban exists in Malta and Vatican City.

The council's report urged member states to end all restrictions which hinder access to safe abortion, including medical costs. Its first-ever report on abortion, it also called for access to free or cheap contraception and compulsory sex education in schools.

The Strasbourg-based council was set up in 1949 to further European integration by harmonising human rights laws. It bases its work on the European Convention on Human Rights and it includes the European Court of Human Rights, which enforces the convention and to which Europeans can bring cases if they believe that a member country has violated their rights.

Pat Buckley of the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children said the vote represented a "tragic day for Europe". He said it was rushed through without proper scrutiny and with just three minutes allowed for each speech.

"The resolution represents an attack on the sovereignty of member states, by attempting to impose a policy on abortion, something for which the assembly has no legal or legitimate justification," he said.

The vote came less than a year after Amnesty International declared that it supported legal abortion as a sexual and reproductive right, a move which sparked a boycott of the organisation by the Catholic bishops of England and Wales.

It also came a day after two Maltese bishops appealed to assembly members not to try to impose abortion on their country, claiming that 93 per cent of people there opposed the practice. Archbishop Paul Cremona and Bishop Mario Grech issued a statement in which they said that "abortion is not a choice but murder".