On February 25, the European Commission will make public its decision on the European Citizens’ Initiative “My Voice, My Choice”. In this context, for the French NGOs members of the European federation ONE OF US – the Jérôme Lejeune Foundation, the CPDH (Evangelical Protestant Committee for Human Dignity), the ECLJ (European Center for Law and Justice) and the March For Life –, the published column in the columns of the newspaper The World on February 7 asking the French President to support this European initiative calls for a response in order to bring to light the presuppositions on which the argument of its authors is based.
The European Union exploited
“My Voice My Choice” calls for the establishment of a European mechanism intended to finance and organize access to abortion beyond the national legal framework, and first and foremost, in certain countries, the criminal framework. In other words, any woman could have an abortion, without medical reason, in the most permissive countries in terms of abortion times, that is to say 24 weeks. 24 weeks, or six months of pregnancy… While this little human being is already fully formed, and the excellence of medicine allows women to give birth at this stage and keep their baby alive. 24 weeks of legal abortion would then become the common legal deadline for abortion in the EU…at the expense of European citizens.
However, legislation relating to abortion falls within the competence of the Member States, not the EU, precisely because of their ethical and cultural dimension. The European treaties have never conferred on the EU the competence to harmonize these questions, precisely because they go to the heart of the anthropological and moral choices specific to each nation. Using the EU as a means of overcoming the choices made by people and their national representatives amounts to diverting an area of cooperation into an instrument of ideological normalization, to the defiance of the weakest.
A citizen initiative that cannot close the democratic debate
The authors of “My Voice, My Choice” highlight the million signatures collected. However, this figure cannot be presented as the definitive expression of the will of the European peoples. Indeed, let us recall that another European citizens’ initiative, ONE OF US, had collected nearly two million signatures in 2013. It asked the EU to protect the human embryo by refraining from financing any activity involving its destruction. This collection of signatures was carried out when digital mobilization tools were almost non-existent. This makes the almost two million ONE OF US signatures even more impressive compared to the only 1.2 million supporters of “My Voice, My Choice” in 2025. If Europeans really supported them, and given the unconditional support for “My Voice, My Choice” from Planned Parenthood, they should have collected many more signatures. These two opposing citizen initiatives show that Europe is deeply torn on these issues. The figures have spoken: citizens are more numerous and determined to express themselves in favor of respect for the life of very young human beings and support for maternity rather than for abortion tourism in the EU. So let democracy unfold!
A voluntary evacuation of the scientific question
“My Voice, My Choice” places the debate almost exclusively in the area of rights and public health. This choice is based first on a lie, then on a bracketing of a central question: the biological reality of the human embryo. A lie because we know from experience that, including in countries where abortion is not legal, any woman, and in particular those who are going through a vulnerable situation, have access to a “safe” abortion in hospital… Then, science consistently establishes that human life begins at fertilization. These scientific data do not in themselves prescribe a legal standard, but they constitute a basis of reality that no serious debate can ignore. Presenting abortion solely as an issue of access is to deliberately ignore what the science reveals.
The painful subject of abortion cannot be isolated from a broader reflection on the support of women
We proclaim that freedom is a major anthropological reality, which takes its strength from its rooting in reality: human life. If I am not alive, I cannot be free… Freedom is therefore not an absolute disconnected from reality, or else we are flirting with ideology. It is exercised in a framework which takes into account one’s own existence and that of others, particularly when this “other” is in a situation of radical dependence and vulnerability. To brush aside the reality of the human embryo amounts to excluding certain human beings from the field of common protection.
A Europe facing major human challenges
The painful subject of abortion cannot be isolated from a broader reflection on the support of women, support for motherhood and the protection of the most vulnerable. The European debate should examine the concrete conditions which enable women and men to have freedom to avoid abortion: fight against precariousness, social support, improvement of compatibility between family life and professional life, recognition of the value of all human life. An immense field which calls for awareness, social solidarity, budgets, in short, a short, medium and long term policy.
The “My Voice, My Choice” forum defends an ideological option, which can in no way be presented as an incontestable requirement. The European Union cannot become the instrument of imposed standardization on such fundamental subjects. The Jérôme Lejeune Foundation, the CPDH, the ECLJ and the Marche Pour La Vie, members of the European federation ONE OF US which brings together 50 member NGOs in 18 European countries, are calling for the awakening of Europe, the rediscovery and promotion of its intangible principles of protection of the weakest. They warn of authoritarian excesses which trample on the freedom of member states and citizens. These are the necessary conditions for democracy and peace. We can bet that the European Commissioners will listen to the voice, too discreet perhaps, but powerful and determined, of European citizens who believe that life, liberty and democracy go hand in hand.
