The risk of a new colonialism” “

The European Community intends, with its new Regulation on support for policies and actions concerning reproductive and sexual hygiene, “to promote the recognition of reproductive and sexual rights, safe maternity and access for everyone to reliable services in the field of reproductive and sexual hygiene”. In fact, this commitment has already been assumed by the countries participating in the UN Conference on population and development, held in Cairo in 1994. The final document declares that the various objectives to be achieved by 2015 must also include that of providing safe hygiene and reproductive health. What does this mean? “Reproductive health – says the document of the UNO – implies that people be able to have a satisfactory and safe sex life and that they have the capacity to reproduce and to decide if, when and how to do so. Implicit in this latter condition are the rights of men and women to be informed and to have access to safe, effective, affordable and acceptable methods of family planning of their own choice, as also to other methods of their choice for birth control that are not against the law; and right of access to adeguate healthcare services that may enable women to complete their pregnancy and give birth in safety and ensure couples of better opportunities of having a healthy child”. The continuity between the Cairo document and the new European regulation for reproductive health and hygiene has been declared by Margrete Sandbaek herself (see interview above), rapporteur to the European Parliament of the new regulation: “I want to continue along the same path as that traced by the Cairo Conference in 1994”. At first sight the European intention might be fully shared, but a closer reading of the draft Regulation prompts many questions on the possible means proposed to reach the stated objective. Faced by the tragic situation in which many peoples find themselves due to the facility with which the HIV virus has spread or due to the malnutrition of children, responsible forms of behaviour are to be hoped for – says Sandbaek. It’s no mystery that in the West responsibility in the sexual field is frequently understood in terms of the distribution of condoms, and ever safer contraception because it is abortive. Nor is it a mystery that the chances of having a healthy child are guaranteed by a prenatal diagnosis that condemns to death, by contrast, anyone who does not have a sufficient quality of life, i.e. is not healthy. The real danger of these interventions, whether on the part of the UNO or Europe, consists in the fact that these methods are being offered to solve the grave problems of these peoples. But in doing so is there not a risk of continuing the colonialism of the West in the developing world? Let us add, moreover, that in many cases entire populations live in fear due to the death and disease caused by Aids, which is easily transmitted within the sexual relation and then to children by breast-feeding. In this situation, many people in these countries look with hope and trust to the aid arriving from Western countries. On this delicate question the Church urges that policies be adopted that may ensure respect for the specifically human character of women as persons, as wives and as mothers. Women are the first to suffer, both psychologically and physically, as a result of campaigns inspired by the ideology of fear of population. In these campaigns – as denounced by the Vatican at the Cairo Conference – a false concept of women’s “reproductive health” is used with the aim of promoting different methods of contraception or abortion. These methods may not only suppress the life of the unborn child, but also have serious repercussions on women’s health, to the point of placing their lives at risk. The ideology of fear of population instils women who are mothers with a sense of guilt, concealing the fact that through this maternal dimension they make an essential and irreplaceable contribution to society. The quality of a society is expressed by the respect it shows to women. Marco Doldi, ttheologian