Lourie Shaull, CC BY 2.0, via Flickr
The My Voice My Choice initiative, the result of a petition presented as “citizen-led and popular,” aims to offer European women “safe and accessible” access to abortion in European Union member states. However, abortion does not normally fall within the EU’s remit. Behind the initiative is a consortium of politicized associations that push forward a progressive agenda aimed not only at promoting a culture of death, but also at undermining the sovereignty of states.
On Wednesday, November 26th, a conference was held at the initiative of the European Center for Law and Justice and the ECR Group to provide background on the My Voice My Choice initiative, which was planned to be officially presented at a public hearing in the European Parliament and debated in a parliamentary committee on Tuesday, December 2nd.
Registered with the European Commission in April 2024, it officially collected more than one million validated signatures across the EU on September 1st, 2025, thus reaching the threshold required by European legislation, according to its promoters.
In his public speech on Wednesday, November 26th, Spanish MEP Jorge Buxade highlighted the official and unofficial support for this initiative. Behind a project presented as “popular” are in fact numerous international and non-governmental organizations with varying philanthropic objectives, financed with taxpayer money.
Their commitment is not limited to abortion but covers many other issues. No fewer than 254 associations are registered in support of the initiative. Behind this network of associations lie elites who are accountable to no one and who are pushing forward an agenda that goes far beyond the issue of the right to life—undermining the freedom of sovereign peoples under the guise of progress and the defense of human rights.
Of these 254 associations, only 51 bother to publish detailed and transparent financial information. Among them, 19 receive European funding, and 20 are funded by George Soros’ Open Society. For the remaining 200, their funding remains unclear, which opens the door to many forms of opaque manipulation.
In addition to the Open Society, the European branch of Planned Parenthood is also among the funders of My Voice My Choice. The line defended is that promoted by the United Nations Population Fund. The architecture of this support paints a very coherent picture: the business of killing unborn children is linked to the promotion of mass immigration. Under these circumstances, My Voice My Choice’s political activism comes as no surprise: no fewer than eight videos against the Spanish party VOX have been published by them on social media. These associations impose their debate, backed by their money and their close ties to institutional authorities. In doing so, they trample on the voices of ordinary citizens: behind VOX, in Spain, are there not 4 million voters who are thus politically stigmatized?
The extension of access to abortion is a battle being fought with determination by the progressive Left. It is an issue on which there is massive, constant, and repeated interference in national policies. In his speech, MEP András László recalled the Hungarian case in this regard. Although the government has not radically overhauled Hungarian abortion legislation, the figures are nevertheless falling thanks to the positive side effects of the government’s overarching family policy. But it is precisely this family policy that is the target of some of the most virulent attacks in the European Union.
To understand and reveal the real issues behind the European Citizens’ Initiative My Voice My Choice, it is important to draw a parallel with another initiative, called One of Us, launched in 2012 with the aim of asking the Commission to stop EU funding for programs leading to the destruction of human embryos (human embryo research programs and abortion programs in developing countries). Grégor Puppinck, director of the ECLJ, recalled that the petition to launch One of Us had collected 2 million signatures—twice as many as My Voice My Choice. But the difference is not just numerical. One of Us was a genuine grassroots initiative, not orchestrated by a consortium of professional lobbyists. The signatures were patiently collected by thousands of volunteers across Europe, not by subsidized agencies. In 2014, the European Commission’s response was scathing: even though it was the most important European citizens’ initiative ever launched, One of Us was rejected on the grounds that the request did not fall within the EU’s competence.
As we have said, what is at stake here goes far beyond the ‘sole’ issue of defending life. The sovereignty of states in ethical matters is clearly called into question by the My Voice My Choice initiative which, if adopted, will allow a woman to obtain European funding to have an abortion in another member state if the abortion legislation in her own country is unfavourable to her. For example, if a French woman wants to have an abortion at 20 weeks of pregnancy, where French law prevents her from doing so after 14 weeks, she will be able to obtain funding to travel to the Netherlands, where abortion is permitted up to 24 weeks. This is an undertaking that institutionalizes the circumvention of national laws with the blessing of European institutions. It is easy to imagine how dangerous the application of this principle to other areas could be for the balance of states: but when it comes to respect for life, anything goes.
The objective of the ongoing battle is anthropological and political: it is a question of obtaining at the supranational level what certain countries are blocking at the national level. Pro-abortion lobbyists have multiplied their approaches in recent decades. An attempt in 1994 to obtain an international treaty protecting the right to abortion at the Cairo International Conference on Population and Development came to nothing. At the state level, feminist and pro-abortion associations are engaging in strategic litigation: exploiting individual cases in court to obtain new rights. This method led to the (now reversed) landmark Roe v. Wade ruling in the United States, but it has not been successful everywhere. The third approach is that taken by My Voice My Choice, which is to influence soft law, i.e., to obtain recommendations from international bodies that are not legally binding on states, thereby creating a situation of moral pressure that is increasingly difficult to circumvent. At the international level, the WHO guidelines on abortion are moving in this direction: since 2022, recommendations have been issued to states every year to encourage them to authorize abortion until full term.
At the European level, for the moment, only resolutions have been voted on, without any legal obligations. Fortunately, the offensive launched following the constitutionalising of abortion in France to have abortion included in the Charter of Fundamental Rights has not been successful. My Voice My Choice represents a new stage, directly attacking the sovereignty of states.
On November 5th, the members of the European Parliament’s Committee on Women’s Rights and Gender Equality (FEMM) voted in favor of creating a European fund to “help” women travel abroad for abortions when this is not possible in their own countries. The next step is the adoption of a resolution to this effect in plenary session.
Officially, Grégor Puppinck points out, the EU has no jurisdiction over abortion, but Article 33 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights provides that motherhood and family life must be supported by public generosity. However, there is no program to back up this declaration of intent. At the political level, the demand must remain focused on this objective: to call for the reorientation of funds currently used to promote abortion, in one way or another, towards motherhood and the family, and to remind people, tirelessly, that defending life depends on the sovereign freedom of states to do so.
