BRUSSELS - EPF President and MEPsforSRR Co-Chair Hon. Petra De Sutter, MEP featured in this month's Parliament Magazine discussing what drives and matters most to her, including SRHR.
“This is not just about abortion, I think it’s important to say, it’s also about access to contraception, it’s about child marriage, it’s about female genital mutilation. It’s very much linked to the United Nations programmes that empower girls and women to make their own autonomous reproductive choices to allow development, to allow autonomy, to allow equal chances.”
“If an Indian or Central African girl is married when she’s 13 and she has three children by the time she’s 18, you can imagine that she has little educational opportunity, no way of providing for herself. If something happens, or her husband leaves her, she’s alone with her children, she cannot provide for herself. To empower women they need education and to have education they shouldn’t be pregnant when they’re 13.”