March 15, 2016 (LifeSiteNews) – On March 12, a new European pro-life initiative attracted some 1,200 participants to the Salle Gaveau concert hall in Paris for the public launch of the “One of Us Federation.” All of the 28 countries of the European Union were represented as well as 31 national organizations, plus several ministers and politicians who want to break with Europe’s continual slide towards the culture of death.
“One of Us” started as a European Citizens’ Initiative Petition demanding that the European Commission protect all human beings by prohibiting EU funding of scientific research on embryos and embryonic stem cells. One million signatures from a quarter of the countries of the European Union were required for it to gain consideration. It finally gathered a record 1,721,626 endorsements hailing from all of the European nations, far beyond the organizers’ expectations.
However the European Commissioners for Research, Innovation and Science, after a hectic public meeting in April 2014, declined to submit a legislative proposal, declaring itself satisfied by the existing framework that allows public European funding of research on existing embryonic stem cell lines.
Given the extraordinary success of the “One of Us” petition, organizers and supporters saw this as a plain case of contempt for almost two million citizens of European nations who felt strongly enough about the issue to join the public appeal.
The “One of Us” federation aims to build on that “momentum” in order to coordinate and multiply pro-life initiatives in all the European countries and at the EU level, in order to obtain protection for all, from the newly-conceived child, to the ill and elderly who are now exposed to legal euthanasia in several European countries.
The federation’s president, a former Spanish minister of the interior, Jaime Mayor Oreja, opened the proceedings by saying the launch of “One of Us” is “not just one more act” but a call to individual and collective commitment. “We need to turn our backs on feelings of defeat and resignation, and above all we must stop being overawed by the force of public lies… The answer lies not in extremism, but at the root” of the present situation, he said.
That was in fact the common denominator of the many presentations given on Saturday: many of the speakers recalled the “Christian roots of Europe,” underscoring the necessity of returning to them if anything is to be done at all.
From that point of view the choice of Paris as the venue of the launch of “One of Us” was an apt one: France, with its law of strict separation between Church and State, is one of the most violently secular nations of Europe and it was its government that pressured the European Union into obliterating even a fleeting reference to the Christian roots of Europe in its founding Treaty and Charter. That being the case France is surely the place where the fight for human life is facing one of its principal battlegrounds. So it was in a way providential that the Jérôme-Lejeune Foundation, perpetuating the work of the world-renowned genetic scientist and his commitment to protecting human life, took on the organization of Saturday’s event.
As Jean-Frédéric Poisson, Christian Democrat hopeful for the “Republican” candidacy at the upcoming presidential election in 2017, put it last Saturday, the Christian roots of Europe are what made it what it is and require respect for human dignity “without conditions, without restrictions and without compromise.” He expressed his hope that the One of Us Federation will become a prominent and important “political tool” in today’s world that is designed for the fittest: “The first raison d’être of politics is the protection of the weak – if that were not necessary, we would need neither politics nor laws.”
In one of the more emotional moments of the day, Katalin Novak, Hungarian minister for the family, opened and closed her remarks with quotes from the new Hungarian Constitution which affirms the protection of life from conception and starts with the words: “God bless the Hungarians.” Novak, herself a mother of three (“My most important work,” she said) added that the best way to establish a culture of life is to “strengthen families” and to promote “education.”
“That is our main focus,” she said. “Hungarians are not isolated individuals, they are members of their family community and of the Hungarian community. We do not want to replace parents; we want to make it possible for them to accomplish their educative task.” While Hungary has not been able to modify its abortion laws since Viktor Orban came into power in 2010, it has registered a leap in marriages (up 30 percent in five years) and a 50 percent drop in abortions.
This is proof positive that Europe can make an about turn as regards respect for life. They tried it in Spain, unsuccessfully up to now. The One of Us Federation was happy to welcome Alberto Ruiz Gallardon, the Spanish justice minister who, working on the promises of his centre-right party, supported a law restricting access to abortion that had been proclaimed a “right” by the preceding socialist government of José-Luis Zapatero. Ruiz Gallardon failed, due to the unrelenting hostility not only of the left, but of representatives of his own party who were afraid to lose traction with part of their electorate. The minister courageously stepped down when his prolife initiative was pulled back.
Ruiz Gallardon, calling pro-life work “the most progressive in Europe,” said about abortion: “Women are not guilty, they are victims, and they are often victims of an authentically structural violence of our society that does nothing to avoid abortion… We failed in Spain, but we woke up consciences and triggered commitment. Our only defeat would be not to try!” The former justice minister went on to call Europeans to be proud once more of their history: “Europe gave the major conquests of humanity to the world. We must be proud of being Europeans, but that will only be possible if we protect life.”
The day continued with several round tables illustrated by short video presentations, including a 10-minute film about the Planned Parenthood organ harvesting scandal in the US, which received little honest media coverage in France. Many of the French participants were surprised and horrified to see Planned Parenthood talking about prices for aborted babies’ livers and brains. Jeffery Ventrella, of the Alliance Defense League, commented: “Showing beats knowing”: “Abortion protests itself”, he said. “Planned Parenthood wants to save babies’ hearts, eyes, livers… but it doesn’t want to save babies”.
In his call to change the public narrative on abortion, he stressed: “Light is the best disinfectant.” we need to show that there is “gestational apartheid and gestational genocide,” he added. “Every engagement is a beginning and not a culmination,” he warned, urging Europeans also to “leverage the exposure” of Planned Parenthood: “We must do so with love, grace and compassion for all. You and I are more like the abortionist than like Jesus-Christ, God and Man.”
Sophia Kuby, Director of EU Advocacy of ADF International, went on to show that while the French Association for Family Planning does not procure abortions, as an affiliate of the International Planned Parenthood Federation it fully endorses abortion procurement. And like its international counterparts, it promotes abortion “rights” and aggressive “sex education.” Of the 350,000 “health care services” it provides each year, many are relative to contraception and emergency “contraception” and more than half of their clients are under 20. The French Association for Family Planning also distributes contraceptives and morning after pills, refers women for abortions, and organizes their trips abroad for illegal abortions beyond the legal term.
Kuby noted that IPPF “even strongly opposes the prohibition of sex-selective abortion” and propounds “the full range of sexual rights” from birth, going so far as to call breastfeeding a “sexual act” on the part of the newborn.
These are important points to make in a culture where contraception and sex education are touted as the best alternative to abortion. In France, over two thirds of women who have abortions were using some kind of contraception when they became pregnant.
“Children need love, affection, affirmation – not sex,” Sophia Kuby concluded.
It was up to Grégor Puppinck, director of the European Centre for Law and Justice and one of the proponents of the original “One of Us” initiative, to show that pro-lifers are not fighting for an idea, but for reality, for living human beings. He called the culture of death that is raging in Europe “fundamentally neo-pagan: the culture of the strong against the weak, of quality and intelligence against quantity.”
That is the whole point of eugenics and the horrible examples given not only by Hitler and Nazism but by the proponents of birth control, from Margaret Sanger to Marie Stopes.
Another round table focused on the case of Vincent Lambert, France’s Terri Schiavo, who is still at the center of an ongoing legal battle in which Rachel Lambert is asking for the feeding tube of her husband to be pulled while his parents are fighting for the life of their quadriplegic, minimally conscious son. The Fondation Jérôme-Lejeune and its president Jean-Marie Le Méné played a prominent role in the defense of Vincent’s life and this battle, which is also a battle against the legalization of euthanasia by stealth in France, has been naturally taken up by “One of Us.”
Philippe de Villiers, former presidential candidate in France, former European member of Parliament and former president of the department of the Vendée in France – better known abroad as the founder of the Puy du Fou historical theme park – gave a vibrant closing speech in which he also called for a return to reality and a break with the mercantilist liberalism that accepts “No frontiers and no limits.” He spoke at length of his friend, Jérôme Lejeune, who had foreseen the drift toward all of today’s madness: sex without babies and babies without sex, eugenics, contempt for science that accepts not going beyond certain points when confronted with the premises of life and the very matter of the universe. Contemporary government has neither “potestas” nor “auctoritas” – neither power nor authority, and it lacks the sacred dimension that allows men to adhere to it – and to limit itself, he said. Villiers spoke of another contemporary giant who became his friend, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who once told him: “Today the dissidents are in the East, they are going to pass to the West.”
Dissidence is what is necessary in the face of the culture of death that rules over Europe and so many other nations. It requires courage and lucidity. The “One of Us” Federation does not appear to lack either.