european-union constitutional-law
Is abortion of children with Down&#39;s syndrome legal in EU?
<p>In many countries of the European Union, abortions are performed on women after knowledge of down syndrome in the embryo. In some countries this disease has almost disappeared from the population. And according to MIT news in recent months, we are now on the verge of being able to detect other diseases such as some form of diabetes.</p>
<p>We must not forget that we can also already suppress HIV in births, even if for this virus, the probability of seeing it disappear from the population is much lower.</p>
<p>All this means that in a few years the countries of the European Union will be able to create populations almost disease-free at birth.</p>
<p>The definition of eugenics is :</p>
<blockquote>
<p>the study of or belief in the possibility of improving the qualities of the human species or a human population, especially by such means as discouraging reproduction by persons having genetic defects or presumed to have inheritable undesirable traits (negative eugenics) or encouraging reproduction by persons presumed to have inheritable desirable traits (positive eugenics).</p>
</blockquote>
<p>And we already know that <a href="https://fra.europa.eu/en/eu-charter/article/3-right-integrity-person" rel="nofollow noreferrer">article 3 of EU charter of human rights prohibit &quot;eugenics practices&quot;.</a></p>
<p>My first question is : Why does practices are not considered as eugenics practices following EU charter of human rights ? And my second question is : If it is proven that the constitution of human rights does not prevent such abortions, does this mean that it does not prevent abortions based on the probabilities of the height or IQ of the future child either?</p>

<p>It would appear the answer is &quot;it depends&quot;, based on where the abortion takes place. It's possible that France has a domestic law that prohibits aborting children with Down's syndrome — which would make such an act illegal if performed in France. I am not familiar with French law so do not know and cannot comment on that.</p>
<p>More generally speaking, there is no EU-wide law that prohibits such abortions. For example, in the UK, such abortions are considered somewhat routine and there is no specific law prohibiting them. Indeed, they are explicitly permitted under the <a href="https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1967/87/section/1" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Abortion Act 1967</a>. While there is a prohibition on eugenics in the <a href="https://www.europarl.europa.eu/charter/pdf/text_en.pdf" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union</a> (the Charter), that would only seem to be engaged in the event some EU or domestic law was passed that mandated some form of eugenics.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.echr.coe.int/Documents/Convention_ENG.pdf" rel="nofollow noreferrer">The European Convention on Human Rights</a> has Article 2—the &quot;Right to Life&quot;—however, the rights established by this Article typically only apply to living beings and have not yet been held to firmly apply to foetuses (<em>Vo v. France [2004]</em> ECtHR, para 80.) and an unborn child can be held not to possess these rights until the moment of birth (<em>Paton v. British Pregnancy Advisory Service Trustees [1979]</em>) although it varies from Member State to Member State.</p>
<p>Some Member States (e.g. Ireland) constitutionally guarantee unborn children the right to live, in which case such abortions would presumably be illegal, but unless there's a specific law that prohibits such abortions, in almost all Member States of the European Union, such abortions would not be illegal.</p>
<p>In conclusion, are such abortions prohibited in the EU? Not as far as my research suggests.</p>
