Enhanced cooperation and human rights: legal avenues for protecting the right to abortion within the EU

The European Union (EU) faces differences in member states' positions on EU integration. The European Commission's 2017 White Paper on the Future of Europe emphasized the need for enhanced cooperation among those member states willing to integrate more deeply. While current literature on differentiated integration is extensive, it has mostly focused on understanding the legal and political nature of this phenomenon. Literature considering the opportunities and risks of enhanced cooperation in relation to human rights is limited. To address such a gap, this research assesses the legal potential of enhanced cooperation as a method to protect the right to abortion at the EU level. Abortion is a legally and politically contested issue among member states. Moreover, it is an issue that encompasses the tensions between intergovernmentalism and supranationalism in the EU. With this in mind, the aim of this research is to explore a new legal possibility, using enhanced cooperation to protect the right to abortion, and analytically approach the potential outcomes of selective protection at the EU level.