Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-02-12-Speech-3-266"
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"en.20030212.9.3-266"2
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"Mr President, I would, first, like to congratulate Mrs Sandbæk on her report, which has achieved a broad consensus on a controversial issue.
Reproductive health is one of the fundamental aspects of development and principally, but not solely, affects the developing countries. In those countries, pregnancies and births are the main cause of death and illness amongst women, as has been said previously. Therefore the Group of the European Socialist Party will undoubtedly support an active European Union policy on this issue which does not involve any moral stand, but rather a universal ethical imperative, human rights and development, and we therefore support the regulation being debated today.
This regulation comes at a very appropriate time for the European Union to demonstrate its determination, when other large donors, such as the United States, are pushing for a reconsideration of the commitments made in 1994 at the Cairo Conference on Population and Development. That conference represented great progress, by correcting the political view of population which traditionally focussed on demographic objectives, and since then it has focussed on women’s rights. No less than 179 countries agreed to an action plan on this new basis.
However, at the 5th Conference on the population of Asia and the Pacific, held in Bangkok in December, there was a desire to remove any reference to rights in the field of reproduction and services relating to genetic health in order to conserve United States aid, which refuses to fund organisations which promote family planning, including the United Nations Population Fund.
In reality, in order to reassure those people who are fundamentally opposed to rights relating to genetic health, we must make it clear that family planning, information and access to reproductive health services prevent abortion and, if it is carried out, it is better that it happens under safe and hygienic conditions in order to prevent the 78 000 deaths per year caused by unsafe abortions.
This report and this regulation do not deal with abortion, but the European Union’s contribution to social development, the population’s access to information, to contraceptives, to health care during pregnancy and birth and responsible sexuality.
The European Union must be generous. Therefore the Group of the European Socialist Party will do all it can within the framework of the financial perspectives and in accordance with budgetary authority to increase the funding for this regulation.
We will vote tomorrow in favour of the amendments relating to funding and against any other amendment that may affect the content of this report."@en1
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