Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2002-07-02-Speech-2-313"
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"en.20020702.14.2-313"2
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"Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, may I first and foremost express our deep respect for the rapporteur and for the way she has brought about this well-founded report? Mrs Van Lancker has taken ample account not only of all the groups, but also of the different sensitivities within the groups.
The sensitivity of the report is evident for everyone to see. It concerns an issue which urgently requires clear policy. After all, there is today a huge discrepancy between the different Member States in terms of the rights of women in the area of sexual and reproductive health. This means that the right to decide what happens to your own body is also different in the Member States. All Member States must shoulder their individual responsibility in this respect.
In some countries, it is still completely impossible these days to terminate a pregnancy in a legal and safe manner. As a consequence, ‘abortion shopping’ is on the increase. Mrs Van Lancker mentioned this a moment ago. However, women will go where they can. For example, last year, no fewer than 6 000 women travelled from Ireland to Great Britain for an abortion. The numbers increase every year. My fellow MEP here only knows this too well, as she is from Ireland.
Such statistics illustrate that this is a fact that will affect virtually every family sooner or later, particularly in those countries where sexual education and access to contraception remain sub-standard. I can identify with people who are against legalising abortion, but I do ask myself whether our policy-makers have the right to deny women an abortion? Every policy-maker must be acutely aware of their educational role and it is exactly for that reason that we must also prevent pregnancy from in future becoming something one either does or does not have insurance for. Under no circumstances whatsoever should it be possible to proceed with a termination, whatever the pressures to do so, without the consent of the woman.
Finally, what really matters therefore is to protect pregnant women, on the one hand, and accept that it is always the woman herself who has to decide what happens to her body, on the other. Consequently, Member States therefore have an enormous task of preventing abortions that are not carried out for specifically woman-related reasons, such as poverty, career or stigmatisation. We will be voting in favour of the proposal tomorrow."@en1
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