“We need to be together in this fight”

Strasbourg (Brussels Morning Newspaper) – After the MEPs debate on Women’s rights, Executive Vice President and Commissioner for Social Rights and Skills, Quality Jobs and Preparedness Roxana Mînzatu addressed the “elephant in the room.”

After marking International Women’s Day with Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, leader of Belarus democratic forces, and three other Belarusian and Ukrainian women fighting for freedom, MEPs debated the Commission’s Roadmap for Women’s Rights.

The Roadmap is a commitment of the EU to gender equality and to achieve balance across every area of life, from work-life balance to freedom from gender-based violence and high standards of health.

At the end of the debate, Commissioner Mînzatu, “a woman of action, and not just of words,” as she called herself, commented on this last point in particular. 

I’m going to address the elephant in the room,

she said, and then proceeded to tell the story of how, coming from Romania – a country where from 1966 until the fall of the Communist regime abortion rights were denied – she has heard stories of women dying or being physically and mentally traumatized everyday because of unsafe interruptions of their pregnancies, and stories of children abandoned in “horrendous” state facilities.

When I speak of reaffirmation of a clear principle stating that women should have access to sexual and reproductive health rights, I do not speak from the books. I speak from reality. I come from a family where stories of women dying and suffering were told over coffee every morning. It was normality. Please think twice. 

Then, she invited all members of EU institutions, national governments and civil society to commit to the rights presented in the Roadmap for Women’s Rights as well. 

Our common action is the one that can deliver the rights and protections that women need. We need to be together in this fight everyday, every year, no matter where our position is.