Savita Halappanavar was a dentist who died tragically 12 years ago today, after being denied abortion care after a prolonged miscarriage in Ireland.
In her honour, today ICM is announcing our endorsement of the My Voice My Choice (MVMC) Initiative, to ensure that every woman in the European Union has access to safe abortion care. We are also encouraging midwives and midwives’ associations in Europe and their stakeholders to endorse the initiative. All people living in the EU can sign the petition on the European Commission website, here.
MVMC is an EU-wide initiative committed to ensuring that every woman in Europe has access to safe abortion care. MVMC is collecting 1 million signatures of EU Citizens for our European Citizens’ Initiative (ECI) which demands that the European Commission to pass legislation that would support access to safe abortion care for anyone in the EU who still lacks access to safe and legal abortion. The goal of the Initiative is to give healthcare workers, including midwives, working in countries where abortion access is difficult or impossible the opportunity to help their patients by referring them to a publicly funded care pathway in another EU country. There is no extra work required for midwives, and no personal risk – all they must do is give patients information about where to seek care.
The Initiative has currently collected over 665,000 signatures, becoming the fastest-growing initiative in the history of European Commission. In addition to ICM, the movement is supported by over 250 organisations across Europe, including Amnesty International, Center for Reproductive Rights, the European Women’s Lobby, International Planned Parenthood Federation, Women on Web, and others.
Midwives have a key role in providing counselling about family planning and methods of contraception, administering contraception within their national scope of practice, and providing comprehensive abortion care in accordance with local laws.1 In many countries globally, and in Europe, legal frameworks already recognise and promote the role midwives have in providing these services, while in others, advocacy campaigns are underway to make the necsessary policy changes.
No matter what our personal opinions and beliefs may be, as midwives we share a commitment to women’s health. We encourage individual midwives, regional stakeholders and midwives’ associations in the EU to share information about the Initiative to their own members, service users, and the public, and to ask them to sign.