The Estrela-Abortion-and-Masturbation-Report, second attempt: the Anti-Life-Lobby defies the European Parliament

By J.C. von Krempach, J.D. | November 25, 2013

As mentioned in an earlier post, the abortion lobby is going to make a second attempt to get the IPPF-drafted “Estrela-Report” on sexual and reproductive health adopted by the European Parliament.

Although it is not legally binding, the draft report, which is named after the rapporteur Edite Estrela (a Portuguese left-wing MEP with close links to the abortion industry, who allegedly led her hand when drafting the paper) is highly controversial, as it misinterprets the concept of health in order to promote a “right to abortion”, and advocates the curtailing of conscientious objection rights for medical practitioners.

In addition, in what appears to be an attempt to secure a future clientele for the abortion industry, the draft recommends measures to sexualize adolescents and children, beginning from toddler age. Among other things, it calls for compulsory “comprehensive sexual education in and outside school” (i.e. compulsory interference with the educational work of parents, which is in open contradiction to Art. 2 of the 1st Protocol to the European Human Rights Convention!), which would involve information on masturbation to be given to 0-4 year olds. Unfortunately, Mrs. Estrela has never explained how she imagines this masturbation training to be carried out in practice.

Mikael Gustafsson, President of the EP's Committee Women's Rights and Gender Equality, finds that his extremist agenda should be adopted without debate.

Tomorrow’s session of the European Parliament’s Committee on Women’s Rights and Gender Equality will not be the moment to ask her. Although, in its session of 22 October, the Parliament’s plenary assembly had referred the report back to the Committee in order for it to be redrafted, the fanaticized pro-abortionist majority in that Committee has refused to take the hint: it must be either the radical Estrela draft, or no report at all. The Committee’s President Mikael Gustafsson , a Swedish communist, has therefore drawn up an agenda for tomorrow according which the Committee will take a new vote on the controversial draft without any possibility of tabling new amendments, and without consideration of an alternative resolution.

Given that a strong majority of its members are highly ideologized feminists with close links to the abortion industry, it seems likely that the Committee will adopt the un-reformed version of the draft report for a second time. However, the decisive question is whether the report will be adopted by the Plenary, which will deal with it in the upcoming December session. The abortionist ideology that holds sway in the Women’s Rights Committee is not necessarily representative of the general mood in the European Parliament. With the upcoming elections in May 2014, there is now increasing awareness that the radical and anti-human-rights positions of Mrs. Estrela and her crowd enjoy hardly any support in the wider population. If in the past reports with similar content have been adopted, it was because there was virtually no public awareness of them – and one has even reason to wonder how many MEPs actually knew what they were voting for….

But the Estrela-Report cannot anymore rely on such ignorance: the negative vote on 22 October has caught considerable public attention, and by now there is no MEP who can claim not to be aware of the text’s strange early-childhood-masturbation-agenda. Whoever votes in favour of this report conscientiously lends his support an agenda that involves structural and systematic child abuse. The MEPs who vote on the report in Plenary know that they will be watched, and that voting for this kind of agenda can massively cost them votes in next year’s elections. The resounding success of the European Citizens’ Initiative “One of Us”, which, representing the exact opposite of Mrs. Estrela’s anti-life agenda, has been the most successful of all such citizens’ initiative so far, sends a clear signal to MEPs: the times when the wider public didn’t know, or didn’t care, about the deals that the abortion lobby were able to strike in the Parliament’s back-offices, are now over. There is now public awareness and scrutiny.

Mr. Gustaffson and still needs to learn the lesson. In a democracy, refusal to listen to others is not a sign of strength, but of arrogance.  It was precisely this lack of willingness to engage in a substantial debate that led many Parliamentarians, including some liberal and socialist members, to request the referral back to Committee. In doing so, the Parliament’s plenary set a clear task to Mr. Gustafsson: a majority of MEPs considered the draft inapt for plenary vote, and therefore wanted it to be re-worked in order to find a compromise that could be expected to satisfy other MEPs than just the lunatic fringe. By re-submitting the ill-drafted report without even scheduling a debate on it, let alone allowing the tabling of new amendments, the Women’s Rights Committee exhibits an astoundingly anti-democratic attitude. Why are they so afraid of debate? Is it because they have no arguments?

For more detailed suggestions how to write to your MEP, use the following links:

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