Sexual Left Outraged Over Rejection by European Parliament

By Austin Ruse | December 12, 2013

WASHINGTON DC, December 13 (C-FAM) The European left is outraged today as a controversial resolution went down to a totally unexpected defeat in the European Parliament on Tuesday in Brussels. Called the Estrela Report, the resolution called for a whole host of “sexual and reproductive rights.”

Writing at the blog Turtle Bay and Beyond, European human rights lawyer JC von Krempach said the non-binding Estrela report would have defined abortion as a human right, a first in the European context, eliminate conscience protection for medical personnel, federally fund abortion and in-vitro-fertilization, and through “comprehensive sexuality education” begin to teach toddlers about things like masturbation.

The report was first advanced in October but was voted back to committee for revision. Even that was hailed as a great defeat for the European sexual left. And European pro-lifers celebrated understanding though the document would come back which it did this week.

The growing international alliance of European pro-life groups organized to put pressure on the parliament. An Estrela report Facebook page attracted several thousand members within 24 hours of going up. Thousands of emails flooded into MEP offices in Brussels and Strasbourg.

Irish Member of the European Parliament (MEP) Paul Murphy said, “With the rejection of the Estrela report that dealt with Sexual and reproductive rights, the majority of the European Parliament has shown themselves to have one foot firmly in the Dark Ages. An array of backward anti woman, anti-choice groups mobilised to put pressure on MEPs to vote against this report. These groups masquerade as being pro-life however…they have scant regard for the lives and health of women.”

Edite Estrela, author of the report and Member of the LGBT Intergroup, said, “It’s shameful that in 2013, the European Parliament adopted a more conservative resolution than the previous text on this issue, adopted in 2002. This shows how much work remains to defend the rights of women and minorities. This is a battle lost, not the war.” Estrela described her opponenst as “grubby alliance of right and far-right groups.”

Austrian MEP Ulrike Lunacek, Co-President of the LGBT Intergroup and spokesman for the Green Party said, “I’m shocked and ashamed by this vote. By a very narrow margin, colleagues refused discussing and enhancing the rights of women and LGBT persons in detail.”

Prior to the report the European Humanist Association warned that Members of the European Parliament “have been harassed  – more than 80 000 emails received – by extremist religious organizations requesting them to reject the report, sometimes with personal threats. These organizations have spread the most shameful lies about the content of the report, saying for instance that its adoption would lead to compulsory masturbation for children or to legalization of paedophilia in Europe.”

Until recently European pro-lifers have not been organized at the international level but in recent years that has changed dramatically. The One-of-Us Campaign calling on the European Commission to take up the cause of unborn children gathered 1.8 million signatures from around Europe and guarantees the issues will be on the European agenda in the coming months.

 

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