The European Commission is the executive body of the European Union.
“The specific objective is to contribute to improved universal access to
reproductive health,” said the European Commission of its grant
program, “Investing in People: Good health for all.
The commission added that it is concerned especially for “developing countries which have the worst indicators.”
The commission explained that the programs will fund maternity programs
and “universal access” to a range of services falling under
“reproductive and sexual healthcare, services, supplies, education and
information (including information on all kinds of family planning
methods).”
J.C. von Krempach, of Catholic Family and Human Rights, an organization
monitoring international law and activism, explained in an Oct. 29 blog
post that international organizations often use the term “sexual health”
as code in order to “carry out abortions in developing countries.”
“Very cynically, those abortions are often dubbed as 'menstrual
regulation', a term specifically coined to mislead, so that the women
concerned do not even know what is done to them.”
In addition, he said, grant money from projects such as “Investing in
People: Good health for all” “feeds organizations like the International
Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF), Marie Stopes International (MSI),
and Ipas.”
The document explaining the European Commission’s program later
clarified that the “wider range of family planning methods” did include
the promotion of contraceptives and abortion.
Primary “health care should, inter alia, include,” the document said,
“abortion,” alongside “prevention of abortion and the management of the
consequences of abortion,” maternal care, infertility treatment, and
treatment of sexually transmitted diseases, infections, and other health
care conditions.
Krempach explained that the provision of abortion violates definitions
of “sexual and reproductive health” adopted at a 1994 meeting of the
International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo, which
“clearly excludes abortion from the scope of” health care.
Nevertheless, the “European Commission and the above-mentioned NGOs
pretend that abortion is included” in proposals such as these, he said.
He argued that “it would be necessary for a ‘call for proposals’ such as
this to contain a clarification that abortions, whatever name is given
to them, will not be funded,” to correct the error and conform with
international definitions of sexual and reproductive health.
“The present call for tender does not contain such clarification,” Krempach said.