Women's rights campaigners say a surge in support for the far-right in Europe has made efforts to fund abortion at the EU level even more urgent than before. Campaigners working to get a funding mechanism for abortion at a European level say the election results have made the effort even more urgent than before. While pro-European parties will retain a majority in the parliament, the elections resulted in a that had been predicted for weeks in the polls.
In France, the far-right National Rally (RN) came first with 31 per cent of the vote in a rebuke of Emmanuel Macron’s Renaissance party which came in second with 15 per cent. Far-right parties also came first in Austria and Italy while making gains in Germany and Spain. For European women’s rights activists with the My Voice, My Choice campaign, these results have reinforced the need for abortion funding at the EU level, an effort they say is in part a fight against far-right parties that have supported restricting access.
The campaign aims for the European Commission to have funding so that EU member states can provide the service to “anyone in Europe who still does not have access to safe and legal abortion”. It was an effort that was in particular supported by Polish activists who have been working to overturn a near-total ban on the procedure at home. Polish women’s rights activists told Euronews Health that if they could not get the law changed in Poland, where the right-wing Law and Justice (PiS) party for yea.
