A US charity is set to lose its European Union funding after openDemocracy revealed it received money to run a programme educating girls and young women on sexual and reproductive health despite promoting anti-abortion disinformation.
Our investigation, published in October last year, found the EU gave the World Youth Alliance €1.2m for a number of youth training and educational programmes after the charity made false claims about abortions, including that they cause health complications.
This money included €400,000 to deliver ‘Women’s Health Goes Digital’, which aimed to “design and deliver innovative training programmes in the field of women’s mental and reproductive health and rights”.
Our revelations prompted questions from Members of the European Parliament and led an EU agency to launch a review of the WYA’s funding, which recently concluded that the charity has breached its grant obligations to uphold EU values. The WYA told openDemocracy it “categorically rejects” this claim.
Earlier this month, the WYA announced on Facebook that the European Commission “attacks WYA Europe and strips NGO of its funding”, following letters from the commission.
Neil Datta, the executive director of the European Parliamentary Forum on Sexual and Reproductive Rights, told openDemocracy: “The WYA has been getting away with misusing EU funding to misinform young people and women – it is high time this stops. The commission has finally said enough.”
The WYA, which has an office in Brussels, is officially a “non-religious” NGO, but we found its teachings and values echo religious talking points. It has said that “abortion is not part of reproductive health, and that in no case should abortion be promoted as part of family planning” and that “states must not bow to pressure to include abortion in reproductive health”.
We also uncovered an interview where WYA founder Anna Halpine compared abortion to the Holocaust and the Rwandan genocide and a white paper where the charity said abortion can cause infertility. The UK’s NHS confirms that terminating a pregnancy has no impact on future fertility.
Following our investigation, MEPs from Poland, Germany, Slovakia and Sweden wrote to the European Commission asking it to “clarify its position on the recent reports regarding €1.2m in EU funding for the WYA”. They also urged it to “commit to reviewing and potentially halting EU funding for organisations that oppose reproductive freedom”.
Their intervention led the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EECEA) to review Women’s Health Goes Digital and two other WYA projects: the Youth Act 2024 and the WYA Europe Operating grant 2024.
The agency found the WYA’s educational and training content to be one-sided or biased on sexual and reproductive health rights, and said that WYA’s public positions diverge from established EU positions on human rights.
It also accused WYA of “omission at application stage of key aspects of the activities on sexual health education, such as the emphasis on abstinence, natural family planning, and the idea that life begins at conception”.
Sian Norris
In response to the news, MEPs have urged for better funding for sexual and reproductive health and rights projects. Swedish MEP Abir Al-Sahlani told openDemocracy: “The commission must invest even more in sexual and reproductive health and rights to match the funding anti gender movements have received and repair the damage caused by EU financing such an anti-gender organisation like World Youth Alliance.”
“In times of austerity, every euro of EU funding matters,” said Polish MEP Joana Scheuring-Wielgus. “The commission has to rigorously evaluate both the organisation’s statutes and its projects, ensuring that funding is allocated only to those fully upholding the EU values enshrined in the Treaties and the Charter of Fundamental Rights.”
The WYA now has 30 days to respond to the EECEA’s review. Despite its post on social media, the charity told openDemocracy that as yet, “we are not aware of any final determination by the European Commission with regards to grant funding for World Youth Alliance”.
Disputing the commission’s allegations, the WYA said: “We categorically reject the claim that our organisation fails to uphold the fundamental values of the European Commission or the European Union because of our positions in the field of sexual and reproductive health.”
Its statement continued: “We consider the EACEA's interpretation of [...] the Grant Agreement, and its claim that any activities in our project implementation are at odds with basic values of the EU to be a misapplication of EU law”. It added that all its work is guided by EU values including “human dignity, freedom of thought and expression, pluralism and equality before the law” and that “nothing in the letters demonstrates any breach of them”.
The WYA also said that it believes the commission’s decision means “every organisation must advocate for abortion in order to be considered aligned with EU values, which we consider both incorrect and contrary to the principles of pluralism and freedom of expression”. It said it “stands by” its views on gender, and pointed to a full statement on its website.
