Pro-life organizations condemn inclusion of abortion in EU Directive on violence against women, calling it fraudulent and a violation of subsidiarity, with concerns over EPP support.
Newsroom (15/12/2025 Gaudium Press ) Two prominent pro-life organizations, the NEOS Foundation and the Assembly for Life, have issued a strongly worded statement expressing deep concern and outright rejection of efforts to incorporate references to abortion in the draft Directive (EU) 2024/1385 on violence against women and domestic violence.
The groups describe the move as a fraudulent exploitation of the European legislative process. They argue that abortion, a matter entirely unrelated to the directive’s core purpose, has been introduced into a piece of legislation designed specifically to protect victims and prevent forms of violence such as sexual violence, domestic violence, female genital mutilation, and forced marriage.
According to the organizations, the inclusion is not only extraneous but fundamentally contradictory to the directive’s objectives. They contend that framing abortion as part of the institutional response to violence against women would effectively enshrine as a right what they describe as “a specific type of violence that is perpetrated against the most vulnerable, unborn human beings.”
If the directive is approved in its current form, the groups warn, it would mark the first European legal text to legitimize abortion de facto as a right. They characterize this approach as a strategy of successive approximations, a tactic already employed in other policy areas with what they call disastrous long-term consequences.
The proposal also represents a clear breach of the principle of subsidiarity, the organizations assert, constituting an unwarranted intrusion by the European Union into an area that falls under the exclusive competence of member states.
Particular alarm has been raised over the role of the European People’s Party (EPP) in facilitating this development. Despite the results of the most recent European elections indicating a parliamentary majority composed of forces that, at least nominally, oppose recognizing abortion as a European right and uphold subsidiarity, internal divisions within the EPP – and specifically within Spain’s People’s Party – have resulted in alignment with left-leaning groups. The organizations view this as a betrayal of voter expectations and, in some cases, explicit pre-election commitments.
With the directive still pending a final vote in the plenary session of the European Parliament, the NEOS Foundation and the Assembly for Life have issued an urgent appeal to lawmakers. They call for the complete removal of all references to abortion from the text, strict respect for national competencies, the cessation of any initiatives promoting cross-border access to abortion, and a renewed commitment to what they term European humanism through the defense of life at all stages.
The outcome of the upcoming plenary vote will determine whether these controversial provisions remain in the directive, potentially setting a significant precedent for future EU legislation on sensitive social issues.
- Raju Hasmukh with files from INfocatholica
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