“The family is the basic cell of society. Care for its well-being ought to be one of the priorities of any State” and “parents have a greater responsibility than any other person or institution for the education of their children. Any form of sex education and preparation for family life in schools or in other educational institutes ought to be provided only with parental consent”. These are some of the “resolutions” contained in the final document drafted at the end of the international conference on “Fertility and family life in a changing world. Medical and anthropological aspects”, held in Kaunas, in Lithuania, in recent days. Promoted by the European Institute for the family and family education (EIFLE), a non-governmental organization founded at Grenoble (France) in 1992 with the aim of disseminating and supporting the values of family life with particular attention to the study of fertility and its regulation through natural methods, and by some national scientific institutes of Christian inspiration, the conference was attended by some 430 experts and academics from fifteen European countries, the USA and South Korea. According to the final document, “recent scientific research has demonstrated that sex education does not improve the sexual conduct of adolescents and young people”. On the contrary, it “stimulates the priority of physical over psychological and spiritual needs”. So it would be preferable “to focus programmes in this field on self-knowledge and self-control”. The document also underlines the importance of natural methods of birth control, “scientifically founded and ecological”. “The public institutions responsible for healthcare the document says ought to cooperate with NGOs with a view to teaching and disseminating this practice, which ought also to be inserted in the curricula for the study of medicine at university.
