Strasbourg, 17/09/2004 (Agence Europe) - The European Commission is to contact the Portuguese authorities to obtain more detailed information on the “precise reasons” behind their decision of the end of August to ban the Dutch ship from the organisation “Women on Waves”, with its passengers who administer the abortion pill RU-486, to enter a Portuguese port, said European Commissioner Margot Wallström on Thursday, responding to a plenary question from several MEPs from the GUE/NGL group (Ilda Figueiredo, Francis Wurtz, Eva-Britt Svenson, Miguel Portas et Sergio Ribeiro). Warships prevented “Women on Waves” from entering Portuguese territorial waters, using the justification that abortion is still illegal in Portugal.
In their questions, the GUE/NGL MEPs emphasised the fact that the RU-486 pill is authorised by the European Medicinal Products Agency and is accessible to women up to seven weeks of their pregnancy in most EU countries. The European Commission has not yet received any complaints on this issue, explained Margot Wallström, noting that the Coimbra court in which “Women on Waves” and other organisations appealed against the Portuguese government's decision considered that the Portuguese authorities had not violated Community law with the decision.
The free movement of citizens within the EU can be limited by member states for reasons of safety of public health, albeit always respecting human rights, including freedom of expression, and the principle of proportionality, recalled Ms Wallström, also emphasising that the discretionary powers of member states for public health must always be exercised with regard to directive 64221.
The committee on women's rights had not managed to adopt a joint position on the affair, admitted the President of the committee, Ana Zaborska (PPE-DE, Slovakia) in the course of the debate. In a brief intervention, Ms Zaborska, whose conservative views elicited vehement protest from the left when she was elected, confirmed that the parliamentary committee had had “a very open discussion”. And, mentioning in particular women who had been raped, those suffering from “psychological problems” or “threatened with redundancy” (yes, “that still happens”, she lamented), she acknowledged that women who have abortions never do so “joyfully”.
This was what those MEPs who defended “Women on Waves” endeavoured to explain under violent attack from their fiercely anti-abortion colleagues. The reality is that many women who cannot terminate their pregnancies legally turn to illegal abortions, thereby risking their lives, said Ilda Figueiredo (GUE, Portugal), the Portuguese socialist Jamila Madeira (who noted that one in four Portuguese women has had an abortion), the British Labour member Mary Honeyball (who recalled that one woman dies in the world every six minutes as a result of an illegal abortion, and that the “Women on Waves” ship had gone to Portugal at the request of Portuguese women's organisations), the Dutch MEP Sophia Helena in't Veld of the ALDE group (who commented that banning terminations makes a godsend out of “angel-makers”). In the ALDE group, the French MEP Claire Gibault, although considering the actions of “Women on Waves” “somewhat provocative in their form” (although “legitimate in basis”), emphasised the rights of women to health and dignity, rights which are enshrined in the European Charter of Fundamental Rights. The newly elected MEP said she was “shocked” to see that the European Parliament contained so many women who would jeopardise the achievements of years of campaigning, and lamented the fact that there are so few men on the committee on women's rights. Within her group was a dissenting voice, however; that of Irish MEP Marian Harkin who, mentioning subsidiarity, reaffirmed that abortion falls exclusively within the competences of the member states (she mentioned in passing the ban on smoking in pubs in Ireland which has now been extended to Irish ships, warning: any citizen of another EU country who smokes on an Irish ship is committing a crime).
Several Portuguese MEPs spoke in defence of their government, such as Vasco Graça Moura (PPE-DE), who confirmed that the Portuguese authorities acted perfectly legally because the Portuguese people rejected abortion in a referendum, and from the same group, José Ribeiro i Castro, who blamed the “unbridled propaganda” of “Women on Waves” and exclaimed: “it makes me sick to see my country defamed in this way, and by my colleagues too”. Johannes Blokland (Independence and democracy, Netherlands) recalled that even in the Netherlands abortion was legalised by “a small majority”, and the Dutch Christian-democrat Maria Martens thought that Europe should not get involved in the internal affairs of Portugal. Ms Martens recalled that the “Women on Waves” ship had also visited Poland, and the Polish MEP Sylvester Chruszcz (Independence and democracy) warned: if they try to come back, we will stop them. The Polish MEPs were, in fact, the most vehement in this sword-crossing session on abortion. Urszula Krupa (Independence and democracy), had no hesitation in describing the fact that “fifty million children are killed every year in their mothers' womb” which “becomes their tomb” as “genocide worse than the holocaust”. It is a good thing that in the enlarged European Parliament “there are more MEPs who will stand up for the rights of the unborn child”, cried Michal Tomasz Kaminski (Union for a Europe of Nations). From the same group, another Polish MEP, Marcin Libicki, hammered home: we find ourselves here faced with a “great debate of civilisation” and it is “colossal stupidity” to make it into a simple issue of free movement or respect for Community law. It is good that there are countries in the EU which have not legalised abortion, he said, mentioning Poland, Ireland and Malta alongside Portugal.