The European Union has an excellent declaration "Women's right to self-determination and adequate sexual education and family planning in the European Union". It calls on the European Commission and individual Member States to provide a legal framework for guaranteeing high quality women-centred care and services on reproductive health including safe abortion.

Positive pressure from the European Union is important at this time when women’s legal abortion rights are under attack in a number of European countries and when, in Poland, abortion is banned. It also provides opposition to the aggressive anti-choice agenda promoted by the US government.

Worryingly, the declaration will lapse unless a majority of MEPs (367) sign the declaration before 12th March 06. We need your urgent help in urging your MEP to sign the declaration number 79/2005.

This is the text of the declaration and below that is a model letter for you to post or email to your MEPs below.

To find out who your MEP is and her/his contact details please visit: http://www.europarl.org.uk/uk_meps/MembersPrincip.htm

Please email choice@abortionrights.org.uk with your MEP’s response.

Written declaration on women's right to self-determination and adequate sex education and family planning in the European Union

The European Parliament...

1. Calls on the Commission and the Member States to provide a legal framework for guaranteeing the following values and issues:
• women must have access throughout the EU to accurate information, comprehensive sex education and family planning;
• women must have access to high-quality women-centred care and services on reproductive health including safe abortion;
2. Calls on the Commission and the Member States to consider the prevention of unsafe abortions in some Member States as a public health priority and encourage Member States to delete the restrictive clauses added and/or reservations made in relation to UN Conventions and their Treaty of Accession to the EU;
3. Instructs its President to forward this declaration to the Council, the Commission and the Member States

Model letter for your MEP

Dear . . . . . . . . MEP,

RE. SUPPORTING EU DECLARATION, NUMBER 79/2005 "WOMEN'S RIGHT TO SELF-DETERMINATION AND ADEQUATE SEXUAL EDUCATION AND FAMILY PLANNING IN THE EUROPEAN UNION".

Access to safe, legal abortion services and rights are crucial to European women’s health and equality. Women across Europe face unfair barriers to exercising control over their own fertility.

In Northern Ireland, Ireland and Poland abortion is almost completely criminalised and thousands of women every year have to travel abroad or face potentially lethal back-street abortion.

This declaration is an important pressure towards improving women’s reproductive rights. It calls upon the European Commission and individual Member States to provide a legal framework for guaranteeing high quality women-centred care and services on reproductive health including safe abortion.

As my representative in Europe I would like you to sign declaration number 79/2005 before 12 March 2006 when, without majority support, it is due to lapse.

Please let me know your views on women’s reproductive rights and whether you have signed the declaration before 12th March.

Thank you in anticipation of your support on this.

Regards,

(Please sign off with your name and address so that they know you are a constituent of theirs)

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