ROME — The European Bishops’ Conference (COMECE) has blasted the European Parliament for its July 7 resolution condemning the U.S. Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade and returning the issue of abortion legislation to the states.
According to the European bishops, the EP wandered into territory where it has no competence by meddling in a decision by the highest court of a non-EU country and also betrayed its own mission by pushing a radical pro-abortion agenda that is foreign to international rights treaties.
The misguided resolution adopted by the European Parliament (EP) “paves the way for a deviation from universally recognized human rights and misrepresents the tragedy of abortion for mothers in difficulties,” COMECE declared in a statement signed by its General Secretary, Father Manuel Barrios Prieto.
Specifically, the European Parliament “should not enter into an area, such as abortion, which is out of its competence, nor interfere in the internal affairs of democratic EU or non-EU countries,” the statement said.
In its resolution, the EP threw its support behind efforts by the Democratic Party in the U.S. to push Congress “to pass a bill that would protect abortion at federal level.”
The EP’s promotion of radical political agendas “endangers fundamental rights, including freedom of thought, conscience and religion, freedom of expression, freedom of assembly,” the bishops’ statement said, and “damages social cohesion.”
Instead of creating “higher ideological barriers and polarization,” COMECE stated, we must work for “more unity among Europeans” while also supporting pregnant mothers and accompanying them in overcoming their difficulties in problematic situations.
Along with its condemnation of the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs, the EP resolution went further still, pressing for the EU and its Member States “to legally recognise abortion,” to “make the recognition of this right a key priority in negotiations within international institutions and in other multilateral forums,” and “to advocate its inclusion in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.”
The European bishops responded by insisting that the prioritization of the inclusion of abortion in the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union “may seriously endanger the chances of such reform process, while intensifying confrontations among our fellow citizens and between the Member States.”