The plan to overturn abortion rights in Europe
The activists taking inspiration — and money — from US
anti-abortion groups
For opponents of abortion in Europe, the ruling
confirmed their belief that public opinion and public policy can be changed |
BY CARLO MARTUSCELLI
June 28,
2022 9:13 pm
When news
broke that the U.S. Supreme Court had overturned decades of precedent and
opened the door to abortion bans across the country, the reaction from
opponents of the procedure in Europe was simple: We can do it too.
With
support for legal abortion in Europe polling at the highest in the world, its
opponents know they are rowing against the tide. But activists on the Continent
got a practical demonstration of how a determined minority can make the
impossible happen last weekend, when the U.S. Supreme Court confirmed a
POLITICO scoop that it was repealing the landmark Roe v. Wade ruling. The
decision made, or will soon make, abortion illegal across 16 states.
For
opponents of abortion in Europe, the ruling confirmed their belief that public
opinion and — perhaps more importantly — public policy can be changed.
“This is
very positive, and it will be looked at by other judges,” said Grégor Puppinck,
director of the European Center for Law and Justice and one of the biggest
names in anti-abortion activism in Europe, a few hours after the Supreme Court
decision was announced.
“I think it
is obvious that 50 years after Roe v. Wade, abortion is still a problem, and it
will always be a problem,” he added. “Normalization is not possible.”
Puppinck, a
Quebec native who studied law in France, heads the legal foundation out of
Strasbourg, where he is carrying out a strategy inspired by the American
anti-abortion movement — with funding and support from backers in the United
States.
By issuing
legal opinions and representing clients in court cases, the ECLJ pushes for
conservative interpretations of the law on topics like religious freedom,
assisted suicide and, of course, abortion in the European Court of Human Rights
(ECHR) and in other international organizations.
Over the
years Puppinck has made a name for himself. He's served as an adviser to the
Vatican, and was awarded honors by the Italian government for his legal
services in a lawsuit over the right to hang crucifixes in public schools.
This May,
he gave a speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in
Budapest where he inveighed against socialism, postmodernism and French
President Emmanuel Macron. The annual U.S. version of the conference is a top
political meet-up for the American Republican Party. In the Hungarian edition,
not-coincidentally held in the capital of Viktor Orbán's hard-right government,
Puppinck was joined by heavyweights from the American right, including Fox News
host Tucker Carlson.
American
ties
Organizations
like Puppinck’s are part of an American effort to export anti-abortion activism
across the Atlantic.
Over the
past half-century, U.S. anti-abortion activists have chipped away at the
precedent set by the U.S. Supreme Court in the 1973 Roe v. Wade case, even when
it looked set in stone, arguing that the verdict was based on faulty legal
reasoning.
It was in
the U.S. that largely evangelical activists blazed a trail and turned
opposition to abortion into a basic conservative position, making the religious
right a decisive voting block for Republican candidates. They also targeted law
schools. In 1982, activists set up the Federalist Society to promote
conservative interpretations of the American Constitution.
Now,
through a combination of electoral success, determination to expand their
influence in the judiciary, and sheer luck with the timing of a number of key
U.S. Supreme Court appointments coinciding with Donald Trump’s presidency, they
had their biggest win in a half-century.
Opposition
to abortion isn’t anything new in Europe either. The Catholic Church's
condemnation of abortion dates back hundreds of years, and it's only hardened
over time. Orthodox and conservative Protestant groups take similar stances.
But with
activists on the Continent so far unable to replicate the success of their
American counterparts, U.S. groups are trying to put their thumb on the scale,
sharing tactics and funding with allies in Europe.
In total,
$81.3 million worth of funding flowed from U.S. donors to help fund activism
against abortion and other conservative causes between 2009 and 2018, according
to a report compiled by the European Parliamentary Forum for Sexual and
Reproductive Rights (EPF), a pro-abortion access network that connects members
across European parliaments with a liberal stance on sexual and reproductive
rights.
EPF
Executive Director Neil Datta called the U.S. Supreme Court decision the result
of a multi-decade campaign by Christian conservatives to influence the American
judicial system. Now the same is happening in Europe, said Datta.
“We're just
at a much earlier stage in the process than the United States.”
Activists
take part in a march organized by Italian Pro-Life anti-abortion movements,
entitled 'National March We Choose Life' on May 21, 2022 in central Rome |
Alberto Pizzoli/AFP via Getty Images
In the
funding model outlined by Datta in the report, influential mega-donors set up
charitable foundations that back activist groups in the U.S. These in turn
operate, directly or through subsidiary organizations, overseas.
Puppinck’s
ECLJ, for example, is an offshoot of the American Center for Law & Justice
(ACLJ), a conservative organization based out of Washington D.C. The ACLJ was
set up by American televangelist Pat Robertson and is led by Jay Sekulow, one
of the lawyers who represented Trump in his first impeachment trial. Tax
filings show how the ACLJ helps fund its European counterpart, transferring
$1.4 million in the year ending March 2020.
In
parallel, liberal American donors back pro-abortion rights groups, and the EPF
website lists George Soros’ Open Society Foundations (OSF) and the Bill &
Melinda Gates Foundation as backers. The ECLJ itself has published a report
tracking links between the OSF and judges who served on the ECHR.
The
Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) International is another
European-headquartered offshoot of a conservative U.S. organization.
Tax returns
show how the U.S.-based ADF donated around $2.7 million to various European
groups under the name ADF International headquartered in Belgium, France,
Switzerland, Germany and the U.K. in the year ended June 2021. ADF, in turn,
received $100,000 in the year ended June 2020 from the Prince Foundation, where
the founder of the security contractor once known as Blackwater and Trump-ally
Erik Prince serves as director.
ADF
International is headquartered in Vienna but has offices in Brussels, Geneva,
London and Strasbourg. According to the EU's transparency register, ADF
International's Austrian branch had a budget of €9.5 million for the year
through June 2021. The organization provides legal services to defendants in
sensitive cases — for example helping a midwifery student win damages after
being suspended from a university over what ADF International said was her
anti-abortion views.
The group
is also active in the European institutions. In 2017, it co-hosted an event
with MEPs from the center-right European People's Party group on the use of
fetal tissue in scientific research. And last year, it organized a briefing on
the persecution of Christians in Myanmar with MEPs from both the EPP and the
right-wing European Conservatives and Reformists group.
Updating
the script
Legal
battles and lobbying efforts with conservative politicians are one thing; but
the activists know that if they are to obtain their objectives, they can’t
ignore the court of public opinion.
Lois
McLatchie, 26, originally from Scotland, is a communications officer for ADF
International out of Vienna. She said that while "people may be surprised
to hear" it, she believes her stance against abortion is a feminist one.
“I think we can do far better to support mothers and their babies,” McLatchie
said.
On May 7,
anti-abortion groups converged on Brussels under the banner of the pan-European
group One of Us.
In 2014,
the group — at the time under the leadership of Puppinck — made waves in the EU
capital, after it gathered nearly 2 million signatures in a citizen's
initiative to ban EU funding for research using fetal tissue (it didn't pass).
The gathering this year coincided with the end of the Conference of the Future
of Europe, where One of Us also had tried to bring the topic of abortion to the
forefront, this time with less success.
The event
also highlighted the difference between the movement’s traditional campaigners
and a new generation of activists working to deliver a fresher — more hopeful —
message.
Though the
gathering took place the same week as the bombshell news of POLITICO’s U.S.
Supreme Court leak, its mostly older speakers made almost no mention of it.
Instead, sounding more like an academic meeting than a political rally,
participants discoursed on the meaning of freedom and responsibility. Aristotle
was mentioned more than once. The names of the justices that were about to
overturn Roe v. Wade didn't come up at all.
In an
interview after the event, One of Us president, the grey-bearded 70-year-old
former Basque politician Jaime Mayor Oreja, painted a gloomy picture of the
future, for both the anti-abortion activism and society as a whole.
“We're
experiencing the end of a period," said Oreja. "A period that is
presided over by decadence.”
Younger
attendees, however, gave a cheerier take on the future of their movement — one
more attuned to current events than Classical philosophers.
Aliette
Espieux, 23, is a spokeswoman for France’s March for Life. Another American
export, the first March for Life was a street demonstration first held in 1974,
the year after the Roe v. Wade decision. An annual Paris version of the event
was started in 2005. In 2017, official estimates put the number of attendees at
around 11,000, though this year attendance fell to about 4,500, according to
the Paris police.
“My main
goal is, first of all, to change the mentality of people on the ground,"
said Espieux, whose Twitter bio predicts that she belongs to the generation
that will “abolish abortion.”
Like others
in this younger — very often female — cohort, Espieux is working to update the
movement’s pitch for a modern audience, putting sympathy for the plight of
women front and center.
"Women
who have an abortion suffer ... we want to speak with this person on the
street,” she said, adding she was enthusiastic about the news from the U.S. —
at the time only a leaked draft.
“It gives
us a huge [amount of] energy," she said.
Maria
Formosa is even younger. The 19-year-old comes from Malta, the country with the
strictest abortion laws in the EU. Last year, Formosa said that with four
friends she launched an online group called I See Life where pro-life young
people could share their views.
“This was
an initiative which we took, after observing that in Malta, there are many
pro-life youths,” she said. “However, they are afraid to speak up. We wanted to
create a platform where youths can feel safe.”
The
potential of this new generation has not gone unnoticed by the movement’s
establishment. Last year, in response to what it described as the
"deepening crisis of academic life,” the Polish conservative think tank
Ordo Iuris founded a Warsaw-based university intended to promote conservative
causes and train a pipeline of graduates to staff the movement’s organizations,
as well as provide candidates for the courts and other government institutions.
At
Collegium Intermarium, students can take a five-year course in law, as well as
post-graduate courses in the "Management of non-governmental
organisations" or in "Human Rights and International Dispute
Resolution" — which includes a class taught by Puppinck.
What's to
come
It's not a
coincidence that the Collegium Intermarium is based out of Warsaw. If in most
of Europe the right to abortion is in no immediate danger, Poland is the
country anti-abortion activists point to as their guiding star.
The country
instituted a near-total ban in 2020, when a top court ruled pregnancies
couldn’t be terminated due to fetal defects. The decision left only rape or
incest, or if the life of the woman is threatened, as exceptions.
Ordo Iuris
was the driving force behind the ban, publishing a "friend of the
court" brief to the tribunal. The organization's leader, Jerzy
Kwaśniewski, said it was “a great day” when the tribunal made its ruling.
Since then,
the ultra-Catholic conservative group has been busy making sure that the ban is
followed, explained Katarzyna Gęsiak, director of the group's Center for
Medical Law and Bioethics.
“The
pro-abortion organizations, they are still active and they're finding another
way to increase the number of abortions," said Gęsiak.
Abortions
on the grounds of a threat to mental health was one example Gęsiak gave of — as
she described it — the loopholes that pro-abortion NGOs were using to provide
women abortions.
Pregnant
Ukrainian refugees was another. The Ordo Iuris director said she was fighting
to make sure that refugees were going through the Polish prosecutor's office to
certify they had really been raped by Russian soldiers, before getting cleared
to terminate their pregnancy.
The Polish
example also shows how it’s one thing to put in place restrictions on abortion
— and another to maintain them.
Despite the
dominance of the conservative Law and Justice party, the issue has been
politically fraught for right-wing politicians.
In 2016, a
proposed law to ban abortion was withdrawn for being too unpopular. And while
the Constitutional Tribunal's 2020 decision avoided a dicey vote in parliament,
it too was met with huge protests — the largest in the country since the fall
of the Iron Curtain.
In 2021,
these flared up once again after the death of a pregnant woman, which the
family's lawyer blamed on doctors delaying a potentially life-saving abortion.
Meanwhile,
opposition leader Donald Tusk, leader of the conservative Civic Platform party,
has come out in favor of legal abortion, possibly seeing it as a vote winner.
If
anti-abortion efforts gain traction across the Continent, the reaction to this
week’s Roe ruling will likely presage a new division in European politics.
Abortion might prove to split the European right as much as it unifies the
left.
In the
U.K., the country with the longest window of legal abortion in Europe,
Conservative Prime Minister Boris Johnson called the U.S. Supreme Court
decision "big step backwards."
In Italy,
Simone Pillon of the far-right League party celebrated the U.S. court decision
on Twitter, calling it a "great victory." By contrast, Giorgia
Meloni, the leader of Italy's other major hard-right party, Brothers of Italy,
played down the relevance of the American abortion debate to Italy after the
verdict: "The U.S. and Italy have profoundly different legal systems that
can't be compared."
In Spain,
the far-right Vox party has its roots in the "pro-life" movement, and
its party leaders attended an anti-abortion demonstration in Madrid shortly
after news of the ruling broke. Led by Oreja of One of Us, an estimated 20,000
people showed up.
Whether
most European leaders like it or not, the abortion debate in Europe is here to
stay.
Sem comentários:
Enviar um comentário