These are very dangerous times for families, unborn children and other vulnerable people in Europe. I blogged in September on how the rights articulated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights are under threat in the continent. Pro-life and pro-family campaigners must expect to see the publication of documents, funded by the European Union, which promote abortion, euthanasia and other anti-life and anti-family practices - with a special emphasis on zero tolerance for dissent.- Last week the United Nations published a report promoting the legalization worldwide of immediate access to abortion services
- Prominent Catholic figures such as Cherie Blair, the wife of Tony Blair, the former British Prime Minister, endorses the radical pro-abortion agenda of the United Nations - and Tony Blair, who refuses to repudiate his political record on pro-life matters despite his reception into the Catholic Church, has founded the Tony Blair Faith Foundation which has deep pro-abortion roots as I reported in October; strongly pro-abortion US vice-president, Joe Biden, is also a Catholic who uses his position to misrepresent church teaching on abortion as "a personal and private matter" of religious faith
- Morten Kjaerum, the first director of the EU Agency for Fundamental Human Rights, was a member of the EU Network of Independent Experts which published a Legal Opinion challenging the right of medical professionals to conscientiously object to certain practices such as abortion and seeking, without any foundation, to promote the "right" to abortion. The objective of the Agency is to provide EU member states and institutions assistance and expertise on fundamental rights.
- The EU Network's Legal Opinion (to which I refer above), prepared at the request of the EU Commission on the right to conscientious objection, links rights relating to sexual orientation to other supposed rights, including the “right” to abortion and the “right” to euthanasia and assisted suicide. The document quotes, in part, the Diversity and Equality Guidelines of the Catholic bishops of England and Wales in a generally approving way. The bishops’ guidelines and the EU experts’ document clearly agree that, subject to limited and narrow exceptions, Catholic organisations must ensure that no job applicant or employee receives less favourable treatment than another on the grounds of sexual orientation.
- UK Fundamental Rights Reports (FRALEX) has won a contract to advise the EU Fundamental Rights Agency. According to Public Interest Law Network (PILN), in its February edition, most of the previous members of the radically pro-abortion/anti-life/anti-family EU Network of Independent Experts combined to bid successfully for the FRALEX contract.
- Professor Michael O'Flaherty (pictured above) is joint co-director of the Human Rights Law Centre which forms part of FRALEX. He was rapporteur to the meeting which produced the infamous Yogyakarta principles which, amonst other things, called on States to "ensure that all sexual and reproductive health, education, prevention, care and treatment programmes and services respect the diversity of sexual orientations and gender identities, and are equally available to all without discrimination"; according to the World Health Organisation's definition "sexual and reproductive health" services includes the provision of abortion on demand
- EU "experts" like Professor Michael O'Flaherty and the FRALEX team will doubtless be gleefully awaiting Barack Obama keeping his pledge to sign the Freedom of Choice Act (FOCA). Michael Moses, a lawyer for the American Catholic bishops, has warned that FOCA would force all Catholic hospitals and medical professionals to provide abortions, with no opt-outs or rights of conscientious objection.
As I've mentioned before, we need to build a powerful, peaceful resistance movement to anti-life policies pursued by governments. Silence, or worse still, complicity with anti-life and anti-family policies are not only not an option - they must be vigorously opposed by those most intimately concerned and most directly threatened: mothers and fathers throughout Europe and their families.
