Standing up for abortion rights is standing up for democracy

[Celerity]

https://progressivepost.eu/standing-up-for-abortion-rights-is-standing-up-for-democracy/



While abortion has always been a contested issue, we have recently witnessed a renewed activism aiming to erode women’s human right to right to control their body. The ongoing concerted action to undermine abortion laws needs to be analysed and countered decisively. Including the right to abortion in the EU Charter on Fundamental rights could be an important step.

In a few short years, Polish women have gone from an already very repressive abortion regime to a de facto ban, with several women paying the ultimate price by losing their lives. American women woke up in late June of this year to discover that their Supreme Court had taken away what had been a constitutionally guaranteed right to abortion since 1973. While just a few weeks ago, in Hungary, the government of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán adopted a series of medically unsound measures aimed at humiliating and intimidating women into abandoning recourse to abortion.

These developments reveal two disturbing truths: first, the gains we thought we had achieved in many countries regarding women’s rights back in the 1960s, 70s and 80s are not safe and may be reversed. Second, the ones who wish to roll back human rights are not just the same social and religious conservatives who have personal convictions on some ethical issues, but ambitious and savvy political actors who don’t always share our common values of liberal democracy and the rule of law.

Are our human rights in danger?

A first point to clarify is the long-held assertion of many conservative actors that ‘there is no right to abortion in international law’. This argument is a red herring as, indeed, there is a whole body of international law, jurisprudence and normative guidance which provide explicit guarantees for women’s access to health, privacy and empowerment, which include safeguards to access to safe and legal abortion. Two recent examples: the first comes from the European Parliament, with the report of S&D colleague Predrag Fred Matić on the Situation of Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights (SRHR) in the EU, adopted in June 2021. Matić’s report specifically urges “the member states to decriminalise abortion, as well as to remove and combat obstacles to legal abortion”. Notably, his report was adopted by a broad political consensus, with only the far-right voting en bloc against it. A separate development are the guidelines on abortion issued in March 2022 by the World Health Organization (WHO). The WHO Abortion Care Guidelines specifically call for “the full decriminalisation of abortion” and emphasise that “abortion be available on the request of the woman, girl or other pregnant person”. Likewise, these guidelines “recommend against laws and other regulations that restrict abortion by grounds” or “based on gestational age limits”.

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