FOR A FREE, SAFE, LEGAL ABORTION ACROSS EUROPE
STATEMENT OF THE EUROPEAN LEFT
Abortion rights in Europe remain unequal. Thousands of women in Europe have to move from their country or region to access a basic human right. And it is the most vulnerable – migrants, women with fewer resources, rural women – who cannot afford these trips, ask for days off or leave their care responsibilities. In the end, the right to abortion ends up being a question of class and citizenship.
Today, September 28, the Party of the European Left is once again raising its voice because abortion in Europe is still not freely available. While some countries are advancing in rights, others are going backwards with laws that criminalize, hinder or deny access to voluntary termination of pregnancy. The data are devastating: in Poland, abortion has been practically banned since 2020, and women still have no real access to safe and legal services. In Hungary, although Viktor Orbán lost the elections in April 2026, the “fetal heartbeat” law that his government imposed in 2022 is still in force: it forces women to listen to the heartbeat of the fetus before having an abortion, a measure with no medical purpose that only seeks to humiliate and blame. The new government has promised to repeal it, but the parliamentary debate is still open and conservative pressure is strong. Malta maintains one of the most restrictive laws in the European Union, with de facto non-existent access to abortion. And in Andorra, abortion is totally prohibited, even in cases of rape or danger to the life of the mother, forcing some 131 women a year to travel to Spain to exercise their right.
This means that thousands of women in Europe have to move from country to region to country to region to access a basic human right. And it is the most vulnerable – migrants, women with fewer resources, rural women – who cannot afford these trips, ask for days off or leave their care responsibilities. In the end, the right to abortion ends up being a question of class and citizenship: it depends on your zip code, your passport, your paycheck.
But the problem is not just one of borders. In countries like Hungary and Poland, abortion is actively hindered: by forcing us to listen to heartbeats that are nothing more than electrical impulses amplified by a machine, by denying truthful information, or by criminalizing those who help other women exercise their right. They are strategies to blame, stigmatize, and control our bodies.
They are attempts to take us back to the past.
We are not going back. Not one step backwards in our conquests. From the Party of the European Left we demand that abortion be a right enshrined in the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, guaranteed on equal terms for all, without exclusion. We demand an end to the laws that criminalise abortion and the obstacles that expel us from public health. We demand that pharmacological abortion is available in all health centres. We demand that no woman has to cross a border to exercise her right. We demand that we are not forced to listen to heartbeats or denied anaesthesia. We demand comprehensive sex education and access to contraceptives throughout Europe. We demand that it be recognised that abortion is not a privilege, it is a right, and that a right is only real if we can all exercise it.
September 28 is not just a day of remembrance: it is a day of struggle. Rights are not given away, they are conquered, and once conquered they must be defended every day. Let us not allow them to decide for us. Let us not allow our right to depend on a border or a payroll. From the Party of the European Left we encourage everyone to go out, to shout, to organize, to sustain this right in the streets and at the ballot box. Because our bodies are ours. Our decisions are ours. Our lives are ours.
FREE, SAFE, LEGAL, FREE AND ACCESSIBLE ABORTION THROUGHOUT EUROPE.
OUR BODIES. OUR DECISIONS. OUR LIVES.
September 28, 2026
Feminist commission of the Party of the European Left