EU says member states can use bloc's funds for 'safe' abortion access

Responding to the "My Voice, My Choice" campaign, commission vice-president Roxana Minzatu said countries can "voluntarily" draw from existing EU social funds "to support access to abortion care for girls and women in vulnerable situations".

"We wish that every woman can live confidently and freely. This is what member states can commit to, with EU support," said Minzatu, the bloc's commissioner for social rights.

Liberalised across most of the 27-nation bloc, the right to end pregnancies remains severely restricted in some countries -- notably Malta and Poland.

As a consequence, more than 20 million women in the European Union do not have access to safe abortion care, women's rights campaigners say.

Launched last year, the petition urged Brussels to help women from EU countries where abortion is not readily available to undergo the procedure elsewhere in the bloc.

After studying their demands, Brussels said there was no need for new legislation or funding, but that countries could draw from already allocated funds to facilitate travel and access to healthcare for women from other member states seeking to terminate a pregnancy.

Campaigners celebrated the announcement as a victory and a big step forward, despite disappointment it did not allocate new funds for advancing bloc-wide access.

"What is historic today is that for the first time, the European Commission is very vocal that European Union funds can be used to guarantee access to safe abortion," Nika Kovac, one of the petition organisers, told a Brussels news conference.
'Revolutionary'
Rather than requiring changes in national laws, the petitioners had asked Brussels to legislate to set up a financial mechanism to help liberal member states provide abortions to women from other EU countries.

The initiative secured more than one million signatures -- forcing the European Commission to issue a reply outlining the actions it intended to take.

Left-wing EU lawmaker Manon Aubry, while also welcoming Thursday's news, was more vocal in vowing to push the commission for more.

"We're going to fight," she said, "until not a single woman is dying in Europe because she cannot access abortion."

Malta allows abortion only in cases where the mother's life is in danger or the foetus has no chance of survival, whereas in Poland ending a pregnancy is only permitted in cases of rape, incest or if the mother's life is in danger.

Katrine Thomasen of the Center for Reproductive Rights legal advocacy group said it was important that Brussels had outlined how member states could benefit from EU funding to improve access to abortion -- but that further action was needed to turn that into a reality.

"We need the commission to give guidelines to member states about how to develop these programmes, to provide information to patients," she told AFP.

In an interview with AFP ahead of the announcement, the EU's equality commissioner Hadja Lahbib presented the commission's move as "revolutionary".

"It will change women's lives," she said. "A woman who does not have the means to travel, to buy a train or plane ticket, or to pay for safe healthcare to have a proper abortion, will be able to go anywhere in the European Union".