Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2004-09-16-Speech-4-027"
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"en.20040916.1.4-027"2
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"Mr President, there are differing views as to how the law should treat abortion, but, listening to some of those who have spoken, I got the impression that they regarded abortion as progress.
I think we should, at least, be united on one point, that being that every abortion is a catastrophe and a failure. An abortion is a catastrophe for the unborn child, who is killed. An abortion is a catastrophe for the mother, who is often emotionally scarred for the rest of her life. An abortion means failure on the father’s part, for he has often made off in a funk. An abortion is a failure on the part of the state and of society, which have not created the conditions in which life can be adequately fostered. For these reasons, we should deal with this issue very carefully and with a deep awareness of our responsibilities.
States decide in different ways how this is to be dealt with by the law, or, to be more precise, in a democracy, it is the people who take that decision, and their decisions differ. What made Portuguese law what it is was not some sort of shadowy conspiracy, but the Portuguese people – who, in a democracy, decided that they wanted to combat abortion by restricting it, and, indeed, by the use of the criminal law. Poland and many other Member States do likewise, some of them very effectively.
Let me say yet again that this is a subject on which opinions can differ. I do, however, find it unacceptable to behave as if information were the point at issue. Not one Portuguese citizen, whether male or female, is not fully at liberty to seek out information about anything. Anyone would think that the Portuguese were ill-informed yokels. Portuguese men and women are extremely well informed and have access to every possible source of information. What is going on here is agitation and an attempt at undermining the law of a Member State and an important principle of the European Union, that being the subsidiarity principle, and the most important principle in our Charter of Fundamental Rights, the right to life."@en1
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