Brussels , February 9th 2023
The San Pablo CEU University Foundation, together with the Federation One of Us and over 50 civil organizations, have organized an international conference in Brussels to debate on the proposal to include abortion in the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights. More than 150 people have attended this Conference in which MEPs, jurists and intellectuals from Slovenia, Hungary, Portugal, France, Slovakia, Slovenia, Austria, Malta, Germany, Italy and Spain have participated. In the interventions it has been underlined that in view of this proposal, the active defense of life is essential and the impossible legal framework of a measure that violates the fundamental right to Life included in the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights itself and the principle of subsidiarity.
At the closing of this conference, the president of the San Pablo CEU Foundation, Alfonso Bullón de Mendoza, has warned that it is intended that «the issue of abortion becomes a dogma, something that cannot be questioned without being declared excommunicated anyone who dares to discuss it, or outlawed anyone who merely holds a different and divergent opinion”. Thus, he added that “it is, quite clearly, a case of imposition of ideas from which all dissent is to be suppressed. It is about a totalitarian claim on that part of the European population, even with respect to entire countries, that do not agree on such an important issue».
Along these lines, the former member of the European Parliament and president of the CEU’s Royal Institute of European Studies (RIIE) and the One of Us Federation, Jaime Mayor Oreja, has pointed out that this act is «the confirmation that we are capable of overcoming the reverential fear of a dominant fashion that it tries to silence the defense of life, which demands effort and sacrifice from us. It is the most essential debate in which we have to strengthen our presence ”, he added.
In conclusion it was highlighted that more initiatives and legal rigor is needed, more leadership from each one of us. Abortion cannot and will not form part of the European Charter of Fundamental Rights was the main message for all the participants during the event and at the closing ceremony with the interventions of the Italian politician Rocco Buttiglione, the Hungarian Balázs Orbán, the Italian Elisabetta Gardini and the philosopher Rémi Brague.
