Pro-life lobby group Doctors for Life has slammed a European Parliament report on sexual and reproductive health, warning of an "attack on the right to life of unborn children" and a "blatant attempt to undermine the right to conscientious objectioN". 

The non-binding Matic Report, approved by a wide majority in the Parliament on Thursday, calls for safe and legal access to sexual and reproductive health services across the EU, including including comprehensive sexuality education, contraception, abortion, maternal health and fertility services. 

Only one Maltese MEP, Cyrus Engerer, supported the report. Two Labour MEPs abstained while the remaining three MEPs, one Labour and two Nationalist, voted against.

In a statement on Saturday, Doctors for Life said the report was "another step in the efforts of the pro-abortion lobby to normalize this abhorrent practice in Europe and force it on member states".

The group also criticised the adoption of the report by the European Parliament, which it said "tested the principle of subsidiarity" and smacked of a "totalitarianism of values".

"The report utilizes the same shrewd and misleading approach to force
politicians and the public to acquiesce and submit to its conclusions by
repeatedly conflating gender equality and basic human rights with abortion," Doctors for Life said.

"This rationale makes the rejection of abortion equivalent to an unwillingness to
grant equality or essential human rights and is a strategy employed repeatedly
to compel others to accept such proposals. Of course, such a strategy necessitates the continued employment of euphemisms like reproductive rights and healthcare to sanitize the brutal reality of the intervention.

Doctors for Life insisted abortion "unequivocally involves the intentional killing of a human life" and could never be described as healthcare, "since we maintain that healthcare should strive to provide optimal care for all human beings, in this
case, both the mother and her child".

The group also criticised what it described as a challenge to conscientious objection, noting that in several countries where abortion was legal, there remained a significant proportion of medical practitioners unwilling to provide abortions.

It thanked the MEPs who voted against the report, a position it argued was "representative of the Maltese sentiment and the ethical understanding that all human lives matter and are deserving of the right to life". 

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