Abortion: Our letter to Ursula von der Leyen

On February 25, 2026, the European Commission will announce its decision on the “My Voice My Choice” initiative. The request made by this initiative is scandalous: to finance travel for European women to have abortions wherever they wish in the EU.

This means that a French woman who is between 14 and 22 weeks pregnant, and therefore outside the legal time limit for abortion in France, could travel to the Netherlands and have an abortion there legally with funding from the European Union (EU), i.e. taxpayer money. A Polish woman whose child has Down syndrome and who wishes to have an abortion for this reason, which is illegal in Poland, could come to France to do so, with funding from the EU.

Ultimately, this would have the predictable effect of destroying limits or safeguards on abortion in order to align legislation with the most lax countries. In fact, this is the stated objective of the initiators of My Voice My Choice.

Today, Grégor Puppinck, Director of the European Centre for Law and Justice (ECLJ), sent a letter to Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission; Stéphane Séjourné, former French minister and Vice-President of the Commission; and the twenty-five other European Commissioners to denounce this pro-abortion strategy and the infringement of state sovereignty on this issue.

You too can write to them, sharing your thoughts, experiences, and convictions on the issue of abortion:

ursula.von-der-leyen@ec.europa.eu ; cab-sejourne-contact@ec.europa.eu

The ECLJ letter addresses several technical issues. We pointed out that the EU has no competence over abortion but does have competence to support motherhood. We raised this issue during a conference at the European Parliament, which you can watch here:

This letter also reveals the funding behind My Voice My Choice, which its initiators do not claim because they are not proud of it. We also spoke about this issue at the European Parliament.

During these two conferences, six women testified about their abortions. Some of these moving testimonies have been compiled in a playlist on the ECLJ's YouTube channel. One of these women, Charlène, submitted a petition to the European Parliament on January 27, 2026, with the aim of “strengthening support for motherhood and protecting the dignity of women and unborn children in the European Union.”

This petition is based on Article 33 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights and corresponds to a mechanism provided for in Article 227 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union. The petition will be examined by a European Parliament committee, which will decide on the legislative action to be taken. Two excellent members of this committee invited Charlène to testify before the European Parliament: Peter Agius (EPP) from Malta and Paolo Inselvini (ECR) from Italy.

Our letter, our conferences, Charlène's petition, and the emails you send to the Commissioners must show the EU that “civil society,” so often invoked to justify societal demands, is also pro-life.

To date, no European initiative has ever surpassed the nearly 2 million signatures of One of Us, a 2014 petition calling for the protection of the unborn child from conception. The European Commission dismissed this initiative on the grounds that the EU had no jurisdiction in this area. It would be consistent for it to apply the same principle to the initiative: “My Voice My Choice.”