Obama Leader and Scholar advances reproductive rights in Europe

Nika Kovač was sitting in a classroom at Columbia University in New York City as an Obama Scholar when the news broke in June 2022 that American women no longer had a right to an abortion nationally, and that it would be up to each state to legislate access.

“It was the first time that I saw very practically how something that is taken for granted can be taken away in a moment,” said Kovač, a reproductive rights advocate from Slovenia.

The moment served as a wake up call: “It was much more like, ‘OK, we need to organize; if this happened in the U.S., this can also happen in Europe.’”

Things started happening quickly. In March 2024, Kovač, a 2020 Obama Europe Leader (Opens in a new tab) and 2021–2022 Obama Scholar at Columbia University, supported her fellow 2020 Obama Europe Leader Sarah Durieux on her campaign to enshrine the legal right to abortion in the French Constitution. Durieux ran a petition process that garnered more than 180,000 signatures, paving the way for a vote in parliament that made abortion access a constitutional right for French citizens. 

Based on this experience, Durieux and Kovač, along with a coalition of feminist organizations from across Europe, launched the ECI called My Voice, My Choice in April 2024 to advance abortion rights as a fundamental human right and basic healthcare in the European Union. They would use a tool called the European Citizens’ Initiative (ECI). The ECI is a mechanism where, if citizens gather 1 million signatures, the European Commission must formally consider the request, giving citizens a powerful tool to change EU policy. 

On Thursday, the European Commission ruled (Opens in a new tab) that the 27 EU member states will be able to use an existing social fund to help citizens access safe abortions, a direct result of “My Voice, My Choice,” which asserted that women across the EU should have equal access to legal, safe abortions. This is the first time that an ECI successfully resulted in a change to EU policy. About a dozen other signature drives resulted in gathering 1 million for causes, but the Commission didn’t vote to take an action. 

The new funding mechanism will allow women from countries that severely limit abortion access, including Poland, Croatia, and Monaco, covering about 20 million women, to go where it is legal.

With time running out, friends stepped up

In launching “My Voice, My Choice,” Kovač and her team gathered hundreds of thousands of signatures. But as the deadline approached, the campaign stalled at 970,000, just short of the mandatory 1 million. Kovač says the support of her Obama Leaders cohort pushed the movement forward

Fellow Obama Leader Luisa Neubauer , Kovač's peer from the 2020 Obama Europe Leaders Program from Germany, called to mobilize help, framing the movement within the context of shared challenges and worries about creeping authoritarianism across the globe.

"You're exhausted, my friend. I will get you the last 30,000 signatures," Kovač recalled Neubauer promising. Neubauer mobilized her activist network to secure the final needed endorsements. 

Meanwhile, 2022 Obama Europe Leader Delara Burkhardt , a member of Parliament from the Social Democratic Party of Germany, and 2025-2026 Obama Leader Europe Matteo Cadeddu, also served as crucial allies. 

And 2020 Obama Europe Leader Federica Vinci , who was the deputy mayor of a mid-sized Italian city, was a day-in-and-day-out collaborator and a huge help in working with conservatives.

“Federica from Italy, she jumped on it because she was like, ‘You're my friend. I believe in the cost. I will work with you.’”

Finally, the collective action, which gathered more than 1.2 million signatures across 15 countries, reached the threshold for European Commission action (Opens in a new tab) . The campaign won “because of friendship,” Kovač says. “Not because we would be so smart or because we would be so great, but because there was a group of friends who came together and was stubborn enough to move stuff.”

A Personal Mission

For Kovač, the issue is personal. Slovenia, her home country, was the first in Europe to enshrine abortion in its constitution—a right won by, she said, “very brave women from both sides of the political spectrum.” 

When Kovač was around 20, she needed an abortion due to her health situation, including her type 1 diabetes. Her mother reassured her by stating, “It's written in the constitution; it’s your right, and it's not something that you should be ashamed of; it’s part of healthcare.” 

This reassurance helped shape Kovač’s belief that abortion access should be comprehensive; the procedure was free, and she recalled being "taken care of and treated with respect.”

Obama Foundation Supporting Scaling  

Kovač credits The Obama Foundation Leaders and Scholars programs for helping her scale her work. When she started hearing the stories of her fellow Scholars, she said she realized that even though she had accomplished a lot  in Slovenia, she had so much to learn about scaling her organizing. 

“My whole country is two million people,” Kovač said, “It's basically a neighborhood of New York.”

That realization helped her understand the need for new tactics. She had successfully collaborated with other Europe leaders to strengthen her years-long efforts. In the Obama programs, she says she refined her organizing skills, finding ways to work with much larger groups of people than she had before, and learning how to collaborate with people from different perspectives on an issue to drive to a shared goal. 

The win is historic because the campaign first collected 1 million signatures, convinced the European Parliament to pass the proposal by 150 votes, and now successfully changed the European Commission’s agenda. Kovač said the victory sends a signal “that no one is too small, no one is too unimportant, if we come together and do something.”

“I believe that this work, this fight, is worth fighting,” Kovač said.

Her campaign, Kovač said, shows that a cohort of young women from around the world is redefining the way citizens view participation and engagement with institutions. This is a key element of the Obama Leaders Program, Scholars, and the Obama Leadership Network, connecting people from disparate backgrounds who are working on similar issues to ensure they can learn from each other and advance their social change work. 

Kovač and her allies are doing this by building broad coalitions. 

“All our fights are connected,” Kovač said. “If there is a glimpse of hope somewhere, this hope will also come to the other part of the world in one moment.”