Labour MEPs voted against 'abortion' clause in Cashman poverty report

Labour MEPs Edward Scicluna and John Attard Montalto voted against the inclusion of a paragraph dealing with abortion rights, which featured in a report on global poverty by socialist MEP Michael Cashman.

But the two MEPs voted in favour of the entire report, which the Nationalist MEP David Casa latched on to criticise the two MEPs "for voting in favour of abortion."

A look at the voting rolls for amendments to the Cashman report shows there were four split-votes relating to Clause 42 - the contentious paragraph that dealt, amongst other issues, with healthier and safer abortions in developing countries. The full wording of the paragraph is as follows: "The report calls on all the Member States and the Commission to reverse the worrying decline in funding for sexual and reproductive health and rights in developing countries and to support policies on voluntary family planning, safe abortion, treatment of sexually transmitted infections and the provision of reproductive health supplies consisting of life-saving drugs and contraceptives, including condoms."

The contentious paragraph dealing with access to safe abortions had four ‘split votes’, meaning MEPs voted four times over different wordings of this paragaph. The first was a vote to remove the words “and rights”, “safe abortion”, “and the provision of reproductive health supplies consisting of life-saving drugs and contraceptives, including condoms.” Busuttil and Casa voted in favour, toeing the EPP line.

In the second split vote, they voted against the inclusion of “and rights” in the paragraph. In the third split vote to include the words “safe abortion” in the paragraph, they voted against this part in line with the EPP. And the fourth split vote was to include the words “and the provision of reproductive health supplies consisting of life-saving drugs and contraceptives, including condoms”: Busuttil and Casa voted in favour because, they said, “we are not against the use of contraceptives such as condoms.”

Yesterday, Busuttil said this confirmed the two MEPs had voted “consistently against abortion and against reproductive rights.”

Scicluna and Attard Montalto also voted against the inclusion of all four paragraphs, but still voted in favour of the entire repot. This led to Casa's so called 'abortion spin' which was also heavily criticised by the author of the report, Michael Cashman.

In an interview with MaltaToday, Labour MEP Scicluna insisted he and Attard Montalto had voted against the inclusion of Clause 42 in the report, but had eventually voted in favour of the whole report as it was crucial for the fight against poverty around the world.