Appearing before the European Parliament's Committee on Petitions on June 23, French activist Charlène Bernard, who had launched a petition on maternity protection, recounted the ordeal that led her to undergo a forced abortion.
Bernard's petition asks whether European institutions and member states are doing enough to protect women who wish to continue their pregnancies when they face pressure from partners, medical professionals, or difficult social circumstances.
Focusing on maternity protection and support for vulnerable pregnant women, her petition has drawn backing from pro-life civil society groups including the European Centre for Law and Justice as well as support across several political groups in Parliament, most notably the European People's Party, the European Conservatives and Reformists, Patriots for Europe, and Europe of Sovereign Nations.
Her petition also lands in a French context that suggests the issue merits closer scrutiny. According to a 2024 IFOP survey, 29% of French women who underwent an abortion said they felt pressure to abort from the health professional they consulted. Applied to France's 251,270 abortions in 2024, that would suggest on the order of 72,900 women.
These figures give Bernard's appeal broader relevance and raise the question of whether Europe's institutions are doing enough to protect women who want to carry their pregnancies to term.
The personal story behind the petition
At 27, Bernard discovered she was unexpectedly pregnant and wanted to keep her child. However, instead of finding support, she encountered a chain of pressure that culminated in an abortion she never wanted.
"What still hurts so much is the absence of my child, who is the first victim in my story," Bernard told EWTN News. "I am speaking out today so that what I have experienced has meaning, to protect other women from this painful ordeal, and to protect unborn children."
Bernard said her partner repeatedly urged her to abort, despite professing to love her. "It was incomprehensible to me that someone would push the woman they love to destroy the fruit of their love," she said.
She insisted that from the beginning, her intentions were clear: "I was happy to be pregnant, I already loved my baby, I wouldn't have an abortion."
Hoping to find help navigating this tension, the couple first consulted a doctor, who, Bernard said, reacted with incomprehension to her desire to continue the pregnancy. She then turned to a psychologist at a marriage and family counseling center affiliated with the International Planned Parenthood Federation, seeking someone who could help her and her partner talk through the situation and support her wish to carry the pregnancy to term.
Instead, she said the pressure intensified. Staff repeatedly referred to her unborn child as "just a bunch of cells," and a psychologist even arranged an abortion appointment "just in case" Bernard would change her mind. "I found myself trapped from the moment I walked through the door of the family planning clinic."
The pressure reached its peak when her partner forced abortion medication into her mouth, leaving her unable to exercise her freedom.
She said the experience led to severe depression, the collapse of the relationship, and lasting trauma. "What hurt me terribly," she said, "was constantly wondering how I could have let this happen — asking myself, 'What kind of mother am I to have let this happen?'"
Her petition
Bernard said her petition is aimed at forcing European institutions to confront what she sees as a blind spot in the continent's abortion debate: women who do not want an abortion but feel pressured into one.
"The normalization of abortion is such that pregnant women sometimes end up being pressured into having an abortion," she told EWTN News. While abortion rights are strongly defended in France and across the EU, she said, lawmakers should also defend "the right to motherhood," the right of women to carry a pregnancy to term without being subjected to pressure and with meaningful support.
Bernard said many women face social, familial, or spousal pressure to abort because they are considered too young, financially unstable, or at risk of losing their jobs. "Instead of supporting them in their motherhood, the only solution promoted to them is abortion," she said.
Among other things, Bernard is calling for stronger medical, psychological, and social support, including access to counseling, maternity services, housing assistance, and other forms of aid for women who want to continue their pregnancies.
She also wants Brussels to review existing EU funding and health initiatives to determine whether they genuinely support women who carry pregnancies to term, or whether some policies and funding streams indirectly create pressure toward abortion rather than offering real alternatives.
"Today in France, who supports vulnerable pregnant women who want to keep their babies? No one," Bernard said. "On the other hand, it's very easy to find support when you want an abortion."
Testing the EU's abortion funding logic
A key backdrop to Bernard's petition is the European Citizens' Initiative "My Voice, My Choice," which called on the EU to create a financial mechanism to facilitate cross-border access to abortion across the bloc.
In its Feb. 26 response, the European Commission declined to propose a new legal instrument but said member states could already draw on existing EU funding streams, most notably the 142.7 billion-euro ($162 billion) European Social Fund Plus, to support abortion-related services.
For legal scholars at the European Centre for Law and Justice, that position has direct implications for Bernard's case. If Brussels accepts that existing EU funds can be mobilized to help women access abortion, they propose, then those same instruments should also be available to support women who wish to continue their pregnancies.
In practical terms, that could mean EU-backed funding not only for abortion access but also for maternity counseling, housing assistance, and other support services for vulnerable pregnant women facing pressure to abort.
