A bad biopolicy

“The causes of mortality could be prevented by ensuring assistance to maternity in conditions of safety, the access to effective contraception and the possibility of legal and safe abortion”. The statement is contained in a resolution of the European Parliament on the 5th UN Millennium Objective on the improvement of maternal and infantile health (cf. SIR Europe no. 59), approved on 4 September in view of a meeting scheduled for 25 September at UN Headquarters on the UN’s “Millennium Development Objectives” adopted in September 2000. M. Michela Nicolais, on behalf of SirEurope, discussed the question with Monsignor Elio Sgreccia, president emeritus of the Pontifical Academy for Life.How do you judge the resolution of the European Parliament? “To achieve the objective of reducing maternal mortality, the resolution proposes some solutions that can fully be shared, such as the request for greater investments and efforts to improve the human resources allocated to health, or the need for the reliable and prompt gathering of data, with the aim of undertaking a programme of action to reduce maternal mortality and disease. The resolution insists, among other things, on the need to ensure that HIV tests be carried out prior and during pregnancy in national health programmes; that anti-retroviral therapies be provided for pregnant women; that efforts be increased to extend literacy and provide education free of discrimination; and that practices harmful to the mother’s health be prohibited, such as genital mutilations. On other points, however, there’s ambiguity and dissent on our part”. What are the controversial points?“In particular, the resolution diffuses the directives drafted in Cairo on reproductive health, and abortion is included in this ambiguous concept of reproductive health. Moreover, the resolution deplores the churches, and in particular the Catholic Church, for their opposition to contraception and the use of the condom. Behind this condemnation lies the concept of reproductive health: one of the typical contradictory and ambiguous concepts elaborated at the UN Conferences in Cairo in 1994 and Beijing in 1995 that is based on the definition of health given by the World Health Organization, in which health is understood as ‘state of physical, psychological and social well being’, and hence not only in the absence of diseases. This definition, utopian and hedonistic, was criticized by the international community, and yet, despite that, during the UN assemblies in Cairo and Beijing it was applied to maternal health, improperly termed reproductive instead of procreative health. The application of this concept of health, understood in this way, was not limited to comprising, as one would have expected, the sum of preventive cures and therapies that are calculated to safeguard women’s possibilities of procreation, but was extended so far as to legitimise abortion, if the pregnancy could be shown to be inimical to the physical and social well being of the mother, and especially if it could serve to prevent clandestine abortions that jeopardize the life of the mother, thus safeguarding the possibility of so-called safe abortion“. Abortion, therefore, as means of family planning?“Abortion, in the application of policies for family planning, is legitimised by the resolution. All this is in violation of human rights, of the dignity of the mother and of the duty to support the development of the poor countries to which the resolution is addressed”. No. 21 of the resolution deplores “the ban, supported by the churches, on using contraceptives”… “The European Parliament would like to impose the condom and contraception, both for the prevention of Aids, and for unwanted maternities: in fact, these are two quite distinct situations. With regard to the prevention of Aids, the Catholic Church proposes responsible attention to behaviour at risk: in some African countries, such as Uganda, it has been shown that this approach alone, and not that of the use of the condom, has reduced the rate of the spread of Aids in a very significant percentage. As far as unwanted maternities are concerned, there exist other ways, non pharmacological, non invasive and natural, to regulate fertility. In actual fact, if we examine the resolution, we will discover a well-known biopolicy, promoted by some international institutions, including the European Parliament itself, that is aimed at influencing awareness of an anti-life strategy. What the resolution supports, in other words, is a kind of dogma of international policy, contrary to freedom of conscience, and aimed at regulating technologically the demographic problem and imposing a technology that is fundamentally ineffective against the spread of Aids”. What is the contribution of the European Churches, and Catholic politicians, to this debate?“Ever since the Second Vatican Council, the characteristics for a Christian exercise of the professions in general and of politics in particular, are competence, the Christian conscience of values, coherence with conduct and mutual collaboration. At the European level, the need is felt for a greater preparation of parliamentarians in issues linked to life, and a greater collaboration to foster a significant action within one’s own country, irrespective of the ideologies of party”.