Resumen de Towards a common EU-abortion policy? The European Parliament's resolutions on abortion as a human rights issue

Lourdes Peroni, Marta Bucholc

• While abortion regulation may formally escape European Union competence, EU self-restraint maybe under growing pressure. An EU common abortion policy may not be far-fetched, as impulses thattrigger interest in abortion increase in Europe and beyond. In examining a recent series of EuropeanParliamentary resolutions on abortion, this article shows how abortion has moved from the marginsto the centre owing to increasing triggers coming from inside and outside the EU. In pushing abor-tion higher up the agenda, the European Parliament has framed abortion in human rights languageand, most recently, called for abortion to be included as a right in the Charter of Fundamental Rightsof the European Union. The article argues that in adopting these resolutions, the Parliament may beexercising internal cultural diplomacy in human rights and, at the same time, projecting an image ofEU unity while marking a binary division of the world: one moving towards more liberal abortionrules and the other towards greater restrictions