From Dachau to Strasbourg

Some fifty pro-life movements (PLM) of the 27 member countries of the European Union will participate in a series of activities promoted by the European PLM from 15 to 17 December. The programme will start on 15 December, in the commemorative centre of Dachau, with a meditation on the equality of every human being. On 16 December a meeting of representatives of the PLM of the European Union will be held in Strasbourg, aimed at pursuing the European Petition “for the life and dignity of man”. It’s the third time that the European PLM will meet together, following their meeting in Strasbourg in 2007 and one with the Pope in April 2008. A Nobel Prize for Life. The culminating moment of the joint initiatives of the European PLM will be held in the chamber of the Council of Europe in Strasbourg on 17 December: the European “Mother Teresa of Calcutta” Pro-Life Prize, a kind of “Nobel Prize” for life founded by pro-life and pro-family movements throughout Europe. The prize will be awarded to the memory of Jérôme Lejeune, who discovered trisomy 21 (Down’s syndrome) and was the first President of the Pontifical Academy for Life. The award of the prize to the memory of Lejeune will be celebrated with two study sessions. The main speakers at the first session will be Salvatore Mancuso, chairman of the ethical committee of the Policlinico Gemelli in Rome, Giuseppe Noia, Professor of Prenatal Medicine at the Catholic University of Rome, Henri Bléhaut, director of research of the Jérôme Lejeune Foundation in Paris, and Monica Lopez Barahona, director of the Centre of Biomedical Studies in Madrid. The second session will be addressed in turn by Letizia Pini, President of the Association of parents and persons with Down’s syndrome, Tony Cole, director of the Lejeune Clinic for children with Down’s syndrome, the gynaecologist Silvie De Karmalék, and the geneticist André Mégarbané. Before the award of the prize, an intervention by Cardinal Ennio Antonelli, President of the Pontifical Academy for the Family, is expected. Commitment in favour of all human beings. The joint initiatives of the European PLM are not exhausted with the programme of events from 15 to 17 December. First, on the occasion of the celebration of the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the European pro-life movements recalled that man is always man from conception to natural death. “If it’s not clear who has entitlement to human rights, the whole doctrine of human rights becomes pointless. Against the barbarities of discrimination between human lives worthy of being lived and human lives not worthy of being lived, the Universal Declaration, 60 years ago, proclaimed the principle of the equality and dignity of all beings belonging to the human family. Our commitment to the right to life from conception to natural death is based on this principle”, emphasize the European pro-life movements. To underline these principles, a press conference was held at the European Parliament in Brussels, with the participation of Carlo Casini, Preident of the Italian Pro-Life Movement, and Anna Záborská, President of the Commission of Women’s Rights and Gender Equality at the European Parliament. A joint petition. The most important common project however is undoubtedly the petition “for the life and dignity of man” that the European pro-life and pro-family organizations, associated together in the umbrella organization FEFA (European Forum for Human Rights and Families), launched a year ago, to mark the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The aim of the petition, addressed to the continental authorities (European Parliament, European Commission, EU Council of Ministers, Council of Europe) and to the Secretary General of the UNO, is to raise the awareness of citizens “to the need to restore to the European Union its true identity, inseparably linked to its Christian roots”. The European signatories of the petition re-affirm that “human dignity, freedom, equality, solidarity and justice constitute the spiritual and moral patrimony on which the union of the European peoples is based”, as declared in the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the EU. But, point out the PLM, “human rights are flouted also because not all human beings are recognized as entitled to these rights”. It is also emphasized in the petition that “the definition of the family is not always clear, in a general context in which the demographic decline in Europe is a source of grave concern and in which the educational task that parents have to their children is becoming ever more important”. Moreover, the signatories of the petition ask that “the basis for the interpretation, promotion and application of human rights be always formed by the recognition of the right to life of each and every human being from conception to natural death and by the family as the fundamental nucleus of the State, formed by the marriage between a man and a woman”. In the press conference held at Strasbourg on 10 December, an appeal was also made to Europeans to sign the “Petition for the life and dignity of man” which has already been signed by 950,000 people and will remain open till July 2009 when it will be presented to the authorities of the European Union at the opening of the new legislature.