With the opposition of MEPs on the Polish right, the European Parliament adopted on Wednesday a resolution on the equality of women and men. for ensuring easy access for women to contraception and the possibility of abortion.
381 MEPs voted for the resolution, 253 against and 31 abstained.
Women need to be in control of their sexual and reproductive rights, especially by ensuring easy access to contraception and the possibility of abortion. (…) Women must have access to free consultations on abortion – reads the article that aroused the most emotions among Polish MEPs.
The PO and PiS were against him, which was surprised by Joanna Senyszyn, SLD representative.
This formulation is unbelievably mild and raises almost no doubts among Europeans, only among the extreme, sclericized Polish right. Even in Polish law, women have the option of having an abortion in four strictly defined cases, but they can. This formulation is obvious in the civilized world. The more that now, when we no longer have borders in the EU, the possibility of abortion is only financially dependent. Women who can afford it can easily go abroad and terminate their pregnancies there – Joanna Senyszyn told PAP in Strasbourg.
In the resolution, MEPs called for the promotion of women’s access to sexual and reproductive health services, and for women’s rights and available services to be promoted.
The EP expressed the conviction that by sexual and reproductive health we mean the general well-being, both physical, mental and social, of a person in everything that concerns the reproductive organs, their functions and functions. Recognition of women’s full physical and gender independence is a prerequisite for an effective sexual and reproductive health policy as well as the fight against violence against women, the resolution continues.
In my opinion, the provisions concerning reproductive health and wide and unlimited access to abortion are harmful. Deciding about abortion lies within the competence of individual member states, which in their legislation reflect public approval or lack thereof for the protection of conceived life, protested in a press release by Civic Platform MEP Joanna Skrzydlewska, who sits on the EP women’s committee.
The opposition was also expressed by PiS MEP Konrad Szymański, who called the resolution a harmful document. The report, by proposing to popularize access to abortion in the European Union, violates the exclusive competences of the Member States in this area (…) Every responsible legislator should do everything to reduce the number of abortions. The prevalence of abortion is a measure of the decline of our culture; it is a measure of our departure from humanism, he declared.
Meanwhile, the draft rapporteur, Belgian socialist Marc Tarabella, emphasized that the article on sexual and reproductive rights was a negligible part of the EP’s annual report on the situation of women in the EU. He emphasized other provisions of the resolution: about discrimination against women in the labor market, about the fact that they are still victims of violence and sexual exploitation, and about the plight of immigrant women. He reminded that women still earn an average of 14-17 percent. less than men. He also pointed out that the gender pay gap, occupational segregation and gender stereotypes also apply to men.
We need to capture in the imagination of society scenes that contradict gender stereotypes, so that no one is surprised anymore that a woman is a bus driver and a man does the laundry, Tarabella appealed in the resolution’s justification. That is why the document included an appeal to the European Commission and member states to launch social campaigns in schools and the media to change the perception of the roles of women and men in the family and to promote a diversified choice of professions.
A socialist amendment was also passed in plenary vote, calling on the European Commission to present a draft comprehensive directive on counteracting all forms of violence against women and, in particular, combating trafficking in women. This is one of the priorities of the Spanish presidency of the European Union. MEPs backed the Spanish proposal to establish an office to monitor women’s rights in the EU.
The resolution is a political position of the EP, without legal force.
Michał Kot and Inga Czerny (PAP)