By Hilary White
GENEVA, September 29, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) – On Friday this week, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) will vote on a pro-abortion report that says that all states should offer abortion by 2015.
Ironically, at the same time as Irish voters are being told by their government that there is no threat from the European Union and the Lisbon Treaty to their constitutional protections of the right to life, the PACE Committee of Ministers is being encouraged to start the development of a European Convention “to achieve universal access to sexual and reproductive health and rights by 2015.”
The report that PACE will be considering is entitled “Fifteen years since the International Conference on Population and Development Programme of Action.”
Pat Buckley, the EU representative of the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC), Europe's leading pro-life group, said that it is widely acknowledged that 'reproductive health and rights' is the “culture of death code word for 'abortion.'”
Buckley, noting that the PACE vote comes on the same day as the Irish second referendum on the ratification of the Lisbon Treaty, called the document part of the “creeping agenda of the pro-abortion/anti-life/anti-family agencies in the European Institutions, be it the Council of Europe or the European Union.”
The European Centre for Law and Justice (ECLJ) has rebutted the PACE report, saying in a briefing that the Council of Europe has no authority or competency to promote abortion as a means of family planning and population control which is the underlying purpose of the report.
The ECLJ said the promotion of abortion is “based upon unsupportable concerns regarding the need for greater population control in developing countries.” It violates “core values upon which the Council of Europe was built” and offends the “protection of human life and dignity, and respect for national sovereignty.” It is based on a “neomalthusianism philosophy” and “unfounded assertions” about the need for population control.
“Attacking the legitimacy of any country's abortion laws is not within the competency of the Council of Europe,” said the ECLJ.
The briefing continued, “International law does not provide a so called 'right' to abortion,” the briefing says. “Only the right to life is recognized.”
The European Convention on Human Rights explicitly contains a provision guaranteeing the right to life.
Read related LifeSiteNews.com coverage:
Lisbon Will Force Abortion into Ireland through EU Charter of Human Rights: Irish Pro-Life Lobby
https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2009/jul/09072006.html