Czech pro-life activists gain enough signatures to put abortion ban on Senate agenda

The Czech Senate will deal with a petition that supports the abolition of abortion. The Stop Genocide group says the petition was signed by some 14,000 people. The petition demands that the right to life from conception be embedded in the Constitution as an addition to the Charter of Fundamental Rights and Freedoms.

A similar petition put forward by the Pro-Life movement 15 years ago failed, despite collecting over 50,000 signatures in support of changing the constitution. According to the law on the rules of procedure of the upper house of the Cech parliament, the Senate has to deal with any petition signed by more than 10,000 people.

The Stop Genocide group, which describes abortion as genocide of children before they are born, is calling for the repeal of the 1986 law on abortion, as well as subsequent decrees.

The group also wants to amend the provisions of the Charter of Fundamental Rights and Freedoms. The group wants the part: "Everyone has the right to life. Human life is worthy of protection even before birth" to be replaced with: "Everyone has the right to life from conception to natural death."

The group says it considers abortion to be "unprecedented violence resulting in death" and is intended to make it possible to legally get rid of inconvenient people. "The advocates of genocidal abortion, therefore, deny the humanity of the child before birth in order to justify mass killing," the group said. They are organizing a traveling exhibition in support of its demands.

According to the group’s website, the petition has been signed by 62,000 people over a decade, including online.

Abortion is possible in Czechia for the first three months of pregnancy without giving a reason and until the sixth month if it is suspected that the child suffers from a genetic disorder.

Citing data from the Institute of Health Information and Statistics (ÚZIS), the group says there were 3.3 million abortions in Czechia between 1957 and 2013, and 10 years ago, their annual number reached 22,714. ÚZIS has not published annual breakdowns on the topic since then.