For the first time, abortion is mentioned in an EU law.

Omissions

• No primary EU legislative source (the final text of the revised Directive itself) was found among the search results to verify the exact wording used. The available sources are secondary — a national government press release, a political group statement, and NGO reports.
• It is unclear from the available sources whether the Directive uses the explicit word 'abortion' or refers to it via broader terms such as 'sexual and reproductive healthcare'. The precision of the claim depends on this distinction.
• The MEP could not have cited any source published after the adoption of the Directive on 20 May 2026, as the adoption occurred on the same day as the speech. The claim relies on contemporaneous knowledge of the legislative process.
• Verifying the 'first time' aspect definitively requires proving a negative — that abortion was never mentioned in any prior EU directive, regulation, or decision — which is inherently difficult without exhaustive legislative corpus analysis.

Sources

• SecondarySpanish Ministry of Justice (Ministerio de Justicia)Spain plays a key role in the EU inclusion of the right to abortion in the Victims' Rights Directive, the new regulation extends victim protection to improve access to information, assistance and justice in all Member States.
• SecondaryRenew Europe GroupToday, the European Parliament adopted the revised Victims' Rights Directive, the most significant reform of EU victim-protection legislation since its creation.
• SecondaryCenter for Reproductive RightsIn a historic milestone, the new legislation will clearly spell out the sexual and reproductive health care which must be available to victims of crime across the EU.
• SecondaryFAFCE (Federation of Catholic Family Associations in Europe)Intensive pressures are made to introduce access to abortion in EU law through this directive on victims rights.