The Battle over the Sacred and the Profane

Sexual and reproductive rights in Europe are more and more a part of an intense wrestle. This contains authorized contestation via litigation and third-party interventions at, particularly, the European Courtroom of Human Rights. It’s nevertheless essential to acknowledge that contestation additionally takes place in different, political and public, arenas. Interconnected actions, forming a part of a broader European conservative proper mission, contains political and authorized motion in lots of different arenas, together with within the European in addition to nationwide parliaments.

This wrestle is a few political and non secular backlash to a largely secular, progressive cultural and human rights revolution. It confronts opposing sides of (transnational) civil society, who each make ethical, “sacred” claims, whereas profaning the opponent. Right here, I’ll first focus on the European conservative proper’s mission, the sacred dimensions to this mission, and its more and more dense transnational community. I’ll then exemplify instances of wrestle by turning to initiatives each on the European stage (the promotion of a proper to abortion as a part of the European Constitution and the ECI marketing campaign My Voice, My Alternative) and home parliamentary debates (the Netherlands).

The European Proper’s “sacred” mission

Struggles round sexual and reproductive rights pit extra liberally, progressive-oriented or “frontlash” actors towards different, together with non-liberal, typically radical-conservative “backlash” organizations. Within the actions of the latter, faith is an express and core dimension. The European Proper – linking a wide range of right-wing populist actors with radical, religious-conservative ones – is lively on numerous fronts so as to promote an alternate imaginative and prescient to what are sometimes indicated as “woke liberalism”, ”progressive ideology”, “gender ideology”, and the alleged European liberal hegemony. The supranational mission of European integration and its advanced human rights regimes, each when it comes to the European Union and the Council of Europe, are a core goal of those teams.

The European Proper’s “sacred” mission is grounded in faith and non secular claims. Faith – within the type of distinctive interpretations or utilisations of Christianity – is of strategic worth and is instrumentalised in variegated programs of motion. It types the background for proposals for basic reform of the European establishments, it’s used as a justification for strengthening nationwide sovereignty, it serves as a basic worth foundation for contesting progressive rights promotion, and it offers a key legitimation for the restriction of rights on the home stage. Relating to rights, there are roughly 5 areas the place radical-conservative counter-movements are predominantly lively, particularly when it comes to third-party interventions, however not solely: a) Proper to household, parental authority; b) Sexual/gender id; c) Reproductive practices; d) Euthanasia, and e) Freedom of expression. In recent times, these areas have grow to be more and more contested.

The sacred and the profane

The argument right here follows a cultural- and political-sociological strategy, and is impressed by Durkheim and later sociologists constructing on his work. From this sociological perspective, radical-conservative actors search to assemble an alternative choice to liberal understandings of rights, by the profaning or desacralising of what they see as hegemonic, liberal understandings of rights. Up to date “backlash actions” put the hegemonic sacred (etym. “sacer, holy, devoted to a god”) and profane (etym. “outdoors of the temple”) distinctions on their heads, by criticising “sacred” civil, liberal characterisations of rights – such because the liberal emphases on universalism, individualism, equality, and emancipatory rights extensions for minority teams – and switch them into profane – i.e. polluted, impure – ones (as selling hyper-individualism, endorsing non-natural, “deviant” types of behaviour that defy “pure” ones). On this, radical conservatives declare the standing of victims for many who maintain spiritual, that’s, Christian views.

Radical-conservative actors could be understood as heterodox actions, in that they contest the alleged hegemony of secular, liberal understandings of rights, and their primary types of institutionalisation. One typically repeated argument from the radical-conservative proper is that liberalism undermines the spiritual dimensions of societies. On this, they lay declare to their “sacred”’ commitments (“deeply held values which can be non-negotiable”) and the sacrality of their positions, which denies such “sacred” standing to the positions of the opposition (together with liberal, pro-choice standpoints).

What’s ”sacred” or “absolute” is expressed in recurrent claims in each judicial and political contexts. This contains an insistence on subsidiarity and nationwide sovereignty, not least to guard nationwide worth (Christian) communities from European intervention. The unconventional-conservative proper additional stresses (“sacralises”) the collective over the person, as an example, when it comes to “sacrificial motherhood” (the subjection of the function of the mom to the “wants” of society, together with in demographic phrases), relating kids’s rights and the standing of the household to one of the best curiosity of the entire society, claiming euthanasia just isn’t a strictly non-public matter, or safeguarding the bulk’s (spiritual) emotions towards blasphemous statements by people within the public sphere.

The networked European proper

The “sacred” mission of radical-conservative actors is transnationally organised in numerous networks. One occasion is a community known as “Agenda Europe”, which has hyperlinks to varied radical-conservative actors that interact in political and authorized mobilisation. In its key assertion, Restoring the Pure Order (authentic model: 20141)), the spiritual, sacred dimension is justified via pure legislation, strongly endorsed as an antidote to the “Cultural Revolution” of the Sixties which has allegedly led to a “technique of de-civilisation”. Pure legislation is put ahead as a civilising pressure, whereas human rights are profaned as at greatest a pseudo-religion: “human rights paperwork aren’t any absolute truths, however the end result of a political course of”. Pure legislation is as a substitute ”unbiased of politics, or of the human will”. In actual fact, “[t]here’s a Pure Regulation, which human purpose can discern and perceive, however which human will can not alter” (italics added). In relation to the best to abortion, the preface of the doc states that “[t]he tradition of life related to Christianity has been largely deserted and changed by a veritable ‘tradition of demise’, which, out of inside necessity, will destroy from inside any society that accepts and permits it”.

A proper to abortion within the EU Constitution

Understood in Restoring the Pure Order as an “encouraging” latest growth, one clear level of rupture in relation to the best to abortion is the reversal of the Roe v. Wade judgment (1973) by america Supreme Courtroom, in Dobbs v Jackson Girls’s Well being Organisation (2022). On this judgment, the Supreme Courtroom pushed the best to abortion right into a extra restrictive, conservative course by rejecting abortion as a constitutional proper and leaving authority to control to particular person states. This constitutes a serious turning level within the US, however equally provoked a response on the opposite aspect of the Atlantic, prompting makes an attempt to safeguard achievements round the best to abortion in European states (culminating as an example in France within the constitutionalisation of the best to abortion in 2024).

On the European stage, it mobilised political forces within the European Parliament to undertake a decision that known as for the popularity of the best to abortion within the European Constitution of Basic Rights, and which explicitly acknowledged it acted towards a pushback on gender equality and SHRH [sexual and reproductive health and rights] backsliding and to constitutionally defend the rights which can be below assault. Within the associated parliamentary debate, the initiators (of Renew) known as for the entrenchment of the best to abortion within the European Constitution, whereas opposing, right-wing actors claimed that the European Union ought to defend the best to life in addition to kids’s rights, and never promote a (profane) “tradition of demise”.

Rights contestation in home arenas

The marketing campaign for a European proper to abortion equally triggered reactions in home arenas. Allow us to take for instance the Netherlands, a rustic that till lately was thought of a pioneer within the development of progressive rights. Right here, two motions, initiated by the conservative-Calvinist SGP, and supported by radical-conservative and populist events, had been adopted by the Dutch parliament in March 2025. The federal government was requested to judge the implications of the abolition of a 5-day interval of reconsideration for girls who need to abort, as of January 1, 2023. The second movement requested to anticipate the analysis relating to abortion procedures (presently deliberate for 2028). Whereas for the SGP the motions had been to analyze into an explosive enhance in abortions, in response to the centre for sexual experience “Rutgers”, the 2 motions may have damaging implications for the best of self-determination of girls.

In response, Dutch left-progressive actors put ahead a parliamentary movement for the popularity of a proper to abortion within the European Constitution of Basic Rights in addition to within the UN Covenant of Civic and Political Rights in September 2025. The intention was to safeguard (“sacralise”) the best to abortion in a world during which it’s more and more endangered. This movement provoked an additional counter-move by conservative, spiritual political teams, to induce the federal government to forestall the adoption of the best to abortion in European treaties (insisting on the nationwide prerogative to control abortion). In keeping with them, international locations should retain the sovereign proper to control abortion in methods they see match, whereas the EU allegedly is attempting to impose its (profaning) values on member states in areas resembling marriage, sexuality or abortion.

My Voice, My Alternative Initiative

Returning to the European stage, the European Residents’ Initiative My Voice, My Alternative was equally a response to the developments round Roe v Wade within the US, in addition to to the state of affairs in sure European international locations with de jure or de facto restrictions on abortion. The ECI managed to gather over one million signatures, that means it was profitable. On 2 December, the European Parliament held a listening to with the My Voice, My Alternative campaigners. And on 17 December, the Parliament voted – with 358 votes – in favour of a associated movement.

The visibility of the marketing campaign provoked a transparent response from radical-conservative forces. In previous months, Agenda Europe had claimed on its weblog that it’s “in actual fact a convincing defeat for the abortion foyer”, not least as a result of the sooner “diametrically opposed” ECI One in every of Us gathered 1.7 million signatures in 2014. One of many promoters of this ECI claimed that “[t]his consequence proves as soon as once more that Europe is pro-life at its core”. The ECI depicted the liberal-progressive place in profane, impure phrases, denouncing abortion as “prenatal baby homicide”, a name for EU-funded “abortion tourism”, and a “normalisation of baby-killing”, whereas understanding human dignity within the sacred phrases of together with the dignity of all human beings, ostensibly together with “kids in utero”. Within the Netherlands, the pro-life organisation Schreeuw om het leven (Cry for Life) organised a petition marketing campaign to be introduced to the Dutch Commissioner Wopke Hoekstra. And within the run-up the December hearings and vote, numerous counter-events had been organised on the EP, such “Actual Alternative Means Actual Help” and “My Voice My Alternative: A Authorized, Ethical and Monetary Fraud”. The professional-abortion movement was accompanied 4 different motions towards abortion, tabled by radical-conservative right-wing MEPs and occasion teams, stressing the precept of subsidiarity, the dearth of EU competence, respect for nationwide id, and “motherhood as a vital contribution to society”.

Conclusion

The battle over the sacred and profane is evidently not a brand new phenomenon in Europe (simply consider the debates over the preamble of the European Structure or the Lautsi v Italy case). What does appear novel is the depth, visibility, and lively engagement in a number of arenas of more and more well-organised radical-conservative actors, vastly facilitated by an ever extra hostile worldwide atmosphere.