Newsline 30 May 2014

EU rejects anti-stem cell and anti-choice citizen initiative

News | Thu, 29th May 2014

The European Commission announced this week that it was to take no further action on the 'One of Us' citizen initiative.

The initiative, which is a petition-based campaign that was organised and promoted by religious conservatives and officially supported by the Pope, sought a cut to all EU funding for embryonic stem cell research and IVF treatments involving the destruction of embryos.

The campaign also wanted an end to all EU funding for organisations that are involved in the provision of indirect or direct abortion or "abortion-related" services in low and middle-income countries across the world.

As was pointed out by NSS honorary associate and then-member of the European Parliament's Development Committee, Michael Cashman, during a heated debate on the initiative in April, the consequences of the initiative, if translated into EU policy, would have been devastating for women's health and lives and would have forced women to seek unsafe abortion services.

According to the World Health Organisation, an estimated 47,000 women die each year from complications related to unsafe abortion, with most of these unsafe abortions occurring in low- and middle-income countries.

Currently, the EU spends €120 million in development aid on maternal and reproductive healthcare a year. Between 2007 and 2013, the EU provided funding worth €156.7 million to stem cell research projects.

The EU Commissioner for Development, Andris Piebalgs, argued that the initiative went contrary to the international community's inclusion of "a specific target to reduce maternal mortality and achieve universal access to reproductive health as one of the Millennium Development Goals".

President of the European Humanist Federation, Pierre Galand, welcomed the decision, commenting that, "by rejecting 'One of Us', the Commission also clearly renewed its support for human embryonic stem cells research which remains one of the most promising fields for regenerative medicine, reproductive health and genetic disease research."

Introduced as a result of the Lisbon Treaty in 2012, a European Citizen Initiative lets one million or more EU citizens task the commission with consideration of new laws. Any initiative has to achieve a quorum of signatures from 20 of the EU's 28 countries in order to be debated.

The European Parliament discussed the 'One of Us' initiative in April, before it was passed to the European Commission who made the final decision on whether to proceed with it.

One of the key groups behind the initiative was the European Centre for Law and Justice (ECLJ), an Evangelical anti-choice NGO based in Strasbourg. The ECLJ is the European wing of the American Centre for Law and Justice, specialising in litigation at the European Court of Human Rights, where it attempts to limit recognition of LGBT's and reproductive rights. Both Pope Francis and Pope Benedict openly backed the initiative.

The 'One of Us' campaign constitutes the best supported citizens' initiative since 2012, with nearly 2 million signatories. Some 600,000 of those coming from Italy and 250,000 from Poland.

In response to the Commission's announcement, Gregor Puppinck, Director of the ECLJ, said that the Commission's decision that went "contrary to ethical and democratic requirements". He thought it likely that they would appeal the decision at the EU's highest court, European Court of Justice in Luxembourg.

A woman is stoned. We politely look away

Opinion | Fri, 30th May 2014

Our reluctance to fight 'small' battles – over forced marriage and the burka – merely emboldens the fundamentalists, argues Matthew Syed

I guess I should start by saying that I am half Pakistani. My dad grew up there, has dual citizenship (British and Pakistan) and many of my cousins still live there, including the lovely Zafar, who is based in Lahore.

I also have a couple of relatives who, while no longer living in Pakistan, are Islamic fundamentalists, the kind of people who will have read about the stoning to death of a pregnant woman outside a courtroom in Lahore on Monday and nodded approvingly. They will have done so not because they are lunatics — you would be surprised how rational and charming they appear in conversation — but because of their warped version of religion.

How do they get to such a curious and hateful place? The real problem, I think, is the way moderates both here and in Pakistan tolerate the "smaller" stuff. You know, the way that we turn a blind eye to young girls being "pushed" into marriages they don't really want; the way that "cultural differences" are invoked to legitimise the burka.

These little retreats may seem tolerant and enlightened, a way of embracing people who hold different views; a classic liberal fudge. But they are nothing of the sort. They embolden and shore up fundamentalism. They offer encouragement. And they culminate in the grotesque travesty of a silent minority in Pakistan looking the other way as women are buried up to their waists while members of their own family throw bricks at their heads.

My family has been guilty of it, too. We had one of our fundamentalist cousins to stay when I was in my late teens. My dad — who converted to Christianity as a student in London — took down signs of the cross and a cream-coloured plaque that read: "Christ is the Head of this House". He did so not because his Christianity is lukewarm (it really isn't), but because he did not want to offend Shabba.

To dad, it was the humane thing to do. Shabba would have been deeply affronted if he had learnt about my father's apostasy and would have been honour-bound to leave the house. Dad felt that it was magnanimous to pretend that he was still a Muslim for a couple of days. He felt that, in his compassion for our cousin's feelings, he was acting in a Christ-like way. But looking back, I can see that he wasn't. He — we — should have confronted it head-on. The small battles matter.

You want to know the true meaning of fundamentalism? The 2008 Iranian Penal Code mandated that the stones used to kill adulterers should "not be large enough to kill the person by one or two strikes — nor should they be so small that they could not be defined as stones". You see the point, here? Too big and the victim might die too quickly. Too small, and you might waste an entire day completing a capital punishment. Iran has recently claimed to have dropped its fetish for stoning, but it still goes on in enclaves around the world committed to Sharia.

Turn your mind away from the brutality of honour killings and focus, for a moment, on the psychology. Consider the corrupting power of a religious ideology that can animate a father to perpetrate the most intimate and barbaric of assaults on his own daughter, a brother on his own sister, an uncle on his own niece.

"I killed my daughter as she had insulted all of our family by marrying a man without our consent, and I have no regret over it," the police investigator quoted the father of the murdered woman in Lahore as saying. Her crime, in case you were wondering, was to fall in love with the wrong man.

You cannot win against this kind of barbarism by being nice. You can't win by beating a strategic retreat, as Sotheby's plans to do by withdrawing nudes from arts sales because they are terrified of offending Middle Eastern clients. Fundamentalism is too fierce, too implacable, it takes too deep a hold on those who are infected by it, to reach any kind of compromise. Trying to find an accommodation with fanaticism is like trying to cuddle a virus.

A decade ago, the Metropolitan Police set up a task force to investigate "honour" killings after a series of incidents, including the murder of Rukhsana Naz, a 19-year-old who wanted to divorce her husband and marry her boyfriend. She was strangled by her brother with a piece of plastic flex while Shakeela, her mother, restrained her. Her body was then driven more than 100 miles to be dumped. Heshu Yones, a 16-year-old, was stabbed to death by her father because he disapproved of the way she dressed and of her Christian boyfriend.

Some estimates put the number of honour killings in the UK at 12 per year, but this does not reflect the true scale of honour-related crime. Nor does it encompass the countless women who dare not breach the restrictive codes laid down by their families out of sheer dread. This is the deeper story of repression that afflicts women around the world and which is too often hidden from view.

We have to recognise that we cannot compromise with fundamentalism. The middle road, with its dangerous euphemisms of tolerance and cultural respect, was only ever a dead-end. If we want to win the big battle, we have to win the small ones, too. That is the most valuable lesson to take from the tragedy of a 25-year-old, stoned to death in broad daylight for loving the wrong man.

Matthew Syed is a columnist and feature writer for the Times. This article was originally published by the Times and is reproduced here with the kind permission of the author. The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of the NSS.

Photo credit: Reuters