Ridiculous: the abortion industry’s last-ditch effort to get the Estrela-Report adopted

By J.C. von Krempach, J.D. | December 22, 2013

Some days ago I wrote that I was not going to write any further posts on the European Parliament’s vote to reject the so-called “Estrela-Report”, but somehow I am not able to live up to this good intention. Already yesterday I had to revisit this subject, and today there is again news that I should briefly comment upon. I can’t help it. But I do hope that the Estrela-hype will soon be over on this blog.

The importance of this pro-life victory is best illustrated by the angry and aggressive reactions it provoked within the abortion-lobby, which for decade had been able to advance the anti-life agenda slowly but steadily and without much public scrutiny, by small steps. Many of those small steps came in the form of legally non-binding documents for which the Estrela-Report was a perfect example: although the content was radical, they usually did not meet much resistance, because there was not much media coverage (and if there was, it usually was very friendly). But this situation has changed now. Sparked by radical legislation in several Member States (such as Spain under Prime Minister Zapatero, or France under President Hollande), there is growing awareness among citizens that seemingly “harmless” non-binding documents such as the Estrela-Report are not as inconsequential as they might seem, and that there is a need to fight against them from the very first outset. In addition, the successful citizen’s initiative “One of Us” has for the first time resulted in a Europe-wide mobilisation of the “senior pars” of society. The tide might be turning, and issues like the right to life, marriage, and the family, are now in the spotlight of political debate at the EU, even though the EU has no competence for them. Indeed, these issues might become decisive for the outcome of the upcoming European elections. This is clearly not in the interest of the abortionist/homosexualist lobbies, which, despite being heavily subsidized by the European Commission and the governments of certain Member States, in reality do not represent more than a few thousand people. They have been successful as long as they could work unnoticed in the penumbrae of the EU’s institutions, but they cannot be successful when normal citizens (i.e. those with normal jobs and normal families) become aware of what they are doing.

Despite relating to a legally non-binding text, the Estrela-Report was the European Parliament’s most important vote in the last five years, and the abortionist/homosexualist lobby (it always comes in a package!) has lost it. It suffices to see the faces, and listen to the reactions, of Edite Estrela, Mikael Gustafsson (just look at this video!!!), or Ulrike Lunacek, to understand how devastating a blow this is to them.

A further indicator of the importance of the Estrela vote are the abortionist/homosexualist lobby’s desperate attempts to get it reversed, or at least to relativize it, on the base of the most absurd and childish arguments.

On the website of the “European Parliamentary Forum for Population and Development” (EPF, which isthe rather euphemistic name for a coalition of pro-abortion lobbies such as IPPF, Marie Stopes International, and similar groups), one can read the following:

Distorted vote on the Estrela report: the European Parliament shows continued support for SRHR

BRUSSELS, 19 December – Following last week’s news that the European Parliament voted against an anti-choice position but also resolved not to endorse the progressive Estrela report on sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR), it has emerged that the voting results were seriously affected by several technical errors.

Originally it was declared that the joint European People’s Party (EPP)/European Conservative and Reformists (ECR) alternative resolution had passed by a margin of seven votes replacing the Estrela report. But this figure has now been revised following the correction of errors in last week’s vote. It was revealed that an equal number of Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) voted for and against the alternative EPP/ECR resolution where a number of MEPs votes were recorded incorrectly, or not recorded at all. Had these votes been correctly recorded, the EPP/ECR resolution would have been rejected, enabling a move to vote on the Estrela Report. In addition, as reported by several MEPs and the recording of the plenary session, the simultaneous interpretation of the statement of, Edite Estrela calling to vote against the EPP/ECR resolution prior to the vote was misleading.

Sadly, according to the rules of procedures, the vote as confirmed during the plenary last Tuesday still stands in spite of this news.

While only a few votes were recorded inaccurately, the fact that this would have been sufficient to change the outcome in favour of SRHR reveals the true depth and breadth of support for SRHR across many political groups in the European Parliament. (…)

On some other websites one even can read calls for the vote to be repeated. There also is a Youtube video to document how the simultaneous interpretation of Mrs. Estrela’s speech (which was in Portuguese) into German and French (the two most important mother tongues in Europe) was incorrect and thus misleading. While Mrs. Estrela in fact invited the House to “vote against the two alternative motions so that my draft report can be adopted”, the French and German interprets translated her words as saying that MEPs should “vote in favour of the alternative motion”.

As the video shows, there can be no doubt that the simultaneous interpretations were indeed incorrect. Nevertheless, the claim that this could be used as a basis for calling into question the validity (or at least the political importance) of the vote is so outlandish that I even tend to find it amusing rather than annoying. Indeed, these childishly silly arguments not only bear witness to a very poor understanding of democratic parliamentary procedures, but they are even self-defeating:

1. Firstly, it should be noted that what is decisive in the European Parliament is of course the actual vote, not any statements made after the vote. If it were otherwise, every vote would always be open to manipulation by the losing side. This is what we are seeing now.

2. In the case at hand, there is only one MEP who can credibly claim that (obviously due to some misunderstanding or lack of attention) he voted differently than he had intended. That MEP is Michael “Blitzkrieg” Cashman, who (for quite obvious reasons) in the days and weeks preceding the vote had been one of the most active supporters of the Estrela-Report, but who apparently hit the wrong button when it was time to cast his vote. With regard to the other “corrections of votes” one rather has the impression that the MEPs concerned were put under strong pressure by their peers or group leaders to make such statements. But this is precisely the reason why such statements, while they may be put on record, have no legal relevance.

3. Coming to speak of the translation error, it should in the first place be noted that Mrs. Estrela was the only MEP who was allowed to take the floor immediately before the vote took place. This actually constituted an unfair advantage in favour of the pro-abortion lobby: in which other Parliament is it possible to give the floor only to the supporters, but not to the opponents, of a motion on which a vote is to be taken? It is absolutely ridiculous and disingenuous for the abortion lobby to complain ex post about an unfair advantage from which it benefited.

4. Besides, this discussion relates not to a mistake in the voting procedure, but to mistakes in the translation of the oral intervention of one MEP. Now, as any insider of the European Parliament must know perfectly well, such translation mistakes happen all the time. All plenary speeches are translated into all 21 official EU languages, and it would be completely absurd to expect that there never are any translation errors. On the contrary, a realistic assumption is that such errors occur with regard to the translation of each and every single oral intervention made by any MEP in any discussion. If such translation errors were a reason to cast doubt on the validity of a parliamentary vote, then there probably is not a single vote in the entire history of the European Parliament that could be considered valid.

5. It is therefore utterly inappropriate to speak, as the EPF website does, of votes that were “not correctly recorded” or “not recorded at all”. This is real nonsense. If anything, some votes were not correctly cast by the MEPs who cast them. But that is the responsibility of those MEPs, not of some dark ( probably “ultra-conservative”? “reactionary”?? “fundamentalist religious”???) forces, or of the Parliament’s administration. It is thus deeply disingenuous and irresponsible for EPF and other abortionist groups to indulge in conspiration theories or vaguely insinuate some kind of wrong-doing and manipulation, solely because they are angry about a lost vote. Clearly, they should learn to be more respectful with regard to democracy.

6. But the argument, besides being disingenuous, is also self-defeating. What it completely fails to take into account is that the erroneous translations were listened to not only by supporters, but also by opponents, of Mrs. Estrela’s highly controversial report. Those opponents of course had the intention of doing the opposite of what Mrs. Estrela asked them to do, i.e. to vote ‘yes’ when she called for a ‘no’ and to vote ‘no’ when she called for a ‘yes’. Quite obviously, the translation error was just as likely to mislead them as it was likely to mislead the supporters of Mrs. Estrela’s abortionist agenda.

7. However, not all MEPs were equally likely to be misled. Who would have listened to the French and German translations, if not the MEPs from the French and German-speaking countries? But if one takes a closer look at the vote, one discovers that the outcome was a draw with regard to the votes cast by MEPs from Austria (9-9) and Luxembourg (3-3), whereas a majority of MEPs from Germany (41-51), France (31-34), and francophone Belgium (1-10, based on the assumption that MEPs with French given names are francophone) voted against the alternative motion, i.e. in accordance with the recommendation made by Mrs. Estrela.

8. Thus, under the assumption that all French and German-speaking MEPs were misled by the errors of translation, then the votes for Germany, France and Belgium would have to be turned around, which means that there would have been 22 additional votes in favour of the alternative motion (i.e., against Estrela). If not all, but only some, MEPs were misled, then that increase in anti-Estrela votes would be less. But in no case would the absence of the translation error have led to a better result for the Estrela report. In other words, if the vote was “distorted”, it was distorted in favour of the Estrela-Report, not in its disfavour.

9. The only assumption under which the wrong translation of Mrs. Estrela’s short speech might possibly have resulted in a distortion of the vote to the disadvantage of the Estrela-Report is thus that pro-life MEPs are (on average) less easy to mislead, i.e. more intelligent, than abortionist/homosexualist MEPs. Is that what EPF is really trying to tell us?

And what does it imply for the substance of the respective positions? If pro-life politicians appear to be more intelligent than abortionist/homosexualist MEPs, then the conclusion that imposes itself is that the pro-life position must be  more intelligent than the abortionist/homosexualist agenda the Estrela-Report stands for.

I am thus glad that the more intelligent position has, albeit narrowly, prevailed. And I do hope that in the coming years the European Parliament will adopt many more such smart decisions.

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