Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-04-28-Speech-4-165"
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"en.20050428.26.4-165"2
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"Mr President, I wish to make a statement concerning the vote on Mr Coveney’s report on human rights. The Group of the European People’s Party (Christian Democrats) and European Democrats definitely welcomes the Coveney Report as a whole and has therefore voted in favour of its adoption. Like all Parliament’s reports on human rights, it does of course carry a political message, and Mr Coveney, for whom my Group has high regard, has managed to hold in balance the various political tendencies represented in this House. For this reason, I am all the more astonished and perturbed by the attitude of the Socialist Group in the European Parliament, which ended up abstaining from voting – despite having secured the acceptance of its two amendments on abortion – simply because its amendments relating to Cuba and Venezuela failed. That is politically inept. Acknowledging its importance, the PPE-DE Group voted in favour of the report as a whole.
I would, however, like to make it clear that we regard Amendments 8 and 9 with grave concern and have left it to our members to vote for or against them as a matter of conscience. Why is this so? Firstly, because the amendments call for access to abortion, which is hardly likely to be any sort of bulwark against human rights abuses. Their primary concern is with women who have been raped, even though rape is clearly condemned elsewhere in the report. Secondly, these amendments indirectly imply that abortion is a human right. Abortion, though, is nothing of the sort; on the contrary, it violates human rights. Even the United Nations understands that to be the case. Thirdly, Articles 8 and 9 go against the principle of subsidiarity. The EU has no power to deal with this matter, which is reserved to national jurisdiction, and so most members of our group, having been free to decide in accordance with conscience, have rejected these articles. I, myself, was one of those who did so.
This is not the first time that the left-wing groups in this House have sought to misuse the human rights report in order to make abortion more freely available. The mere fact that a majority wants to do this does not make it right. Nor is it binding, for the report as whole is not binding in its effects. The PPE-DE Group has therefore deliberately left these questions to the consciences of its Members and taken a negative line on the substance of Amendments 8 and 9."@en1
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