The European Commission will not give legislative follow-up to the initiative of the abortion organization “My Voice, My Choice”, which has collected over a million signatures to ask for a mechanism to support access to safe abortion in the Union.
The decision does not arise from ethical evaluations, but from a technical-legal finding: the Union has limited competences in the field of public health. In the official communication, Brussels clarifies that Member States can already use existing tools to improve equal access to safe pregnancy termination services. A new regulatory act is therefore not considered necessary.
In particular, the possibility of using the resources of the European Social Fund plus (ESF+) is indicated. States that intend to do so will eventually have to modify their national or regional programs to explicitly include this type of action among the financeable priorities. The Commission fully embraces the theory of “harm reduction” in the name of which – instead of implementing initiatives to put mothers in the economic, physical and psychological conditions to save the life of their child – hundreds of thousands of abortions are practiced throughout Europe and lists the numbers from the World Health Organization: every year in Europe there are approximately 483,000 abortions defined as “unsafe”. Procedures which, underlines Brussels, “constitute a public health problem, with possible physical damage and serious psychological repercussions, up to the risk to women’s lives”.
“My Voice, My Choice” called for the creation of a financial solidarity mechanism to support states capable of carrying out safe pregnancy termination, in compliance with national regulations, for women who do not have access to a legal abortion in their country.
On 17 December 2025, the European Parliament approved by a large majority (358 yes, 202 no, 79 abstentions) a resolution – non-binding – which invited the Commission to establish a financial instrument to reimburse, with EU funds, travel expenses and abortion procedures for women who travel to states with more permissive regulations.
According to the promoters, the objective is to reduce inequalities in access to safe abortion between member countries. According to critics, it would be a question of promoting and strengthening the idea of abortion as a “right” financed at European level, going beyond the limits of competence set by the Treaties, in particular by the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union.
The campaign launched on February 10 by the European federation One of Us, which brings together 50 associations from 18 countries, including the Italian Movement for Life, fits into this context. The slogan is clear: “No to abortion tourism”.
The petition – available in 21 languages - invites citizens to write to the Commissioner of their country, the President of the Commission, the Commissioner for Health, the Commissioner for Gender Equality and the Commissioner for Social Rights. The declared objective is to send hundreds of thousands of emails asking that European resources not be used to finance trips related to voluntary termination of pregnancy.
Also speaking is Marina Casini, president of the Movement for Life, who speaks of an initiative “adverse to the roots and soul of Europe, founded on human dignity and human rights”.
According to Casini, the request to finance and organize trips for abortions in countries with more permissive legislation would represent “a distortion of the principle of equality” and an improper use of European institutions to overcome the legislative choices of individual states. «Using the EU as a means to go beyond the regulatory provisions developed by national representatives – he argues – means transforming a space of cooperation into an instrument of ideological normalization, to the point of making human rights weapons against the weakest, unborn children».
Casini also recalls the recent intervention of Pope Leo
The comparison remains open. The Commission has chosen not to create new legal instruments, but the political and cultural debate on abortion and the role of the European Union is far from closed.
