A responsible choice

Globalization and technological development raise new challenges also for the defenders of human life. Globalization leads to the reiteration that the protection of the unborn child must not be limited to local initiatives. Countries as well as international organization often promote and fund abortion in distant corners of the globe in our name and with our money. Most of these abortions are carried out via non-governmental organizations, within aid for development policies. Development policies are per se worthy of note and the EU provides consistent funding to related actions. Unfortunately access to such policies by poor countries is often marred by the adoption of laws that are questionable from the ethical angle.   The European campaign “One of Us” is set against the background of the reflection on the progress of science and technology that has accompanied man across historical developments as a sign of its genius. At a closer glance the ambiguities highlighted by Benedict XVI in chapter 22 of the Encyclical Letter “Spe salvi” emerge. As relates to progress the Pope states: “Without doubt, it offers new possibilities for good, but it also opens up appalling possibilities for evil—possibilities that formerly did not exist. (…) If technical progress is not matched by corresponding progress in man’s ethical formation, in man’s inner growth, then it is not progress at all, but a threat for man and for the world.”One of the main areas of this responsibility, recalled by Benedict XVI, is research on human embryo stem cells, always entailing the destruction of the embryos. Today we know that these studies fail to encompass promises of practical medical application, while alternative areas for research delivered encouraging findings that – for ideological reasons – haven’t been sufficiently sustained by the European Union,  although last year the Nobel Prize for Medicine was awarded to research on adult stem cells, which – in the way in which it was carried out – doesn’t raise ethical questions and has positive applications in medical therapy. Reflecting on experts’ unwillingness to relinquish life-threatening forms of research Robert Spaemann wrote: “It is agreed that scientists conducting experiments on animals do not want to be disturbed; specialists in human biology can achieve measurable results from cognitive experiments on embryos and they want the embryos available. But thirst for knowledge is not the same knowledge and it faces borders, which are very different in nature. Therefore, scientists should not attempt to be the judges of their choices (…) while politicians, (including European ones) should not be intimidated” by the claims of some scientists. Focusing on the latter political aspect and looking at the situation in Europe sometimes we complain, not without reason, over the lack of democratic legitimacy of the EU but we add that the result of the integration process is a political entity unprecedented in history. We say sometimes that the Union is a ‘sui generis’ creation and it is difficult, therefore, to re-enact earlier solutions. However, the evident “democratic deficit” of the Union may be addressed with a new tool called “European Citizens’ Initiative” which is known in many European countries and has already been adopted to propose legislation to strengthen the protection of human life. Although MEPs have not always fully acknowledged citizens’ hundreds of thousands of signatures, those who are at the forefront in the defense and promotion of human life did not and will not give up.A token of such determination is the European citizens’ initiative One of Us, providing the opportunity to propose to the European Commission greater protection of human life by cutting access to European funding to bodies and organizations that carry out activities that pose a threat to human life. It is a concrete way to grant European citizens the opportunity to assume a share of responsibility on how the EU spends money that belongs to all of its citizens.