Gay Mitchell, Mairead McGuinness, Colm Burke and Jim Higgins (PPE-DE) , in writing. We voted in favour of part one of paragraph 40 and against part 2 of paragraph 40. Similarly, we voted in favour of the first part of paragraph 41 and against the second part. We abstained on the vote for the resolution as a whole.
The reason for this is that we did not wish to indicate that we support any interpretation of the word ‘rights’ as indicating a support for abortion. We do, of course, support the general thrust of the Millennium Goals and therefore did not vote against the resolution as a whole.