On September 28th. 2016, Arne Gericke, a German Member of the European Parliament from the Conservatives group, organized a Family Breakfast on the first European Day for Safe Birth and Motherhood. Despite pro-abortion groups calling on the UN to declare September 28 as the ‘International Safe Abortion Day’ and to celebrate this first European Day for motherhood, Europe for Family’s Laetitia Pouliquen was asked to give a speech on
#SUPPORTINGMOTHERHOOD -THE FUTURE OF HUMANITY
Motherhood is Wonderful!
She first explained why motherhood was so wonderful: Gift of self as the special “genius of women”, as Saint John Paul II coined it, Motherhood as a debt all of us owe to our mothers and Motherhood as the “Djihad” of love for women
She then recalled that sex complementarity and alterity were to be re-emphasized, in a Western world where men try to have children on “their own” through surrogacy with purchased female gametes, to breast feed or else, in the name of equality. “Fecundity has a deep effect on all aspects of our being: body, mind and soul; we scientifically know that our billions of cells that compose us are sexualized and that the physiological and psychological implications of birth-giving and the mother-child relationship are critical to both mother and child”, explains Laetitia Pouliquen. She quoted studies on Microchimerism and epigenetics, showing evidence of exchanges between mother and child during pregnancy and Post-gestational microchimerism where foetal cells were found in the mother long after the pregnancy. This literature also proves that the hormone oxytocin plays a crucial role in priming the gestational mother to respond in accordance with her natural maternal instincts, thus providing both health benefits for mother and child, and bonding patterns that foster the cognitive and developmental psychology of the baby.
So motherhood is wonderful but under certain conditions! For Laetitia Pouliquen, maternal health must remain a priority. Second, governments need to create a binding legal framework for Equal pay for equal work, for fairness in career advancements while recognising a special female skill management cycle, and time management options. Finally, she recommended inciting voting and tax systems to support motherhood and families with children.
Motherhood is Needed!
Laetitia’s second main topic was the absolute need for motherhood in Europe which is undergoing a demographic crisis as well as an economic crisis. Her charts showed evidence of an EU average birth rate of1.6, far below the generation replacement rate and a natural change of population plunging as opposed to the immigration rate. She pointed at the very high abortion rates in Europe where around 30 per cent of pregnancies end in abortion.
Contrarily to Malthus disciples who promote population control to create economic growth, and contrarily to radical feminists who blame unwanted pregnancies for climate change, Laetitia argued that the EU would benefit from a higher birth rate to drag the economy up. By increasing the output per person and decreasing the number of persons, stagnant or even shrinking output will occur, like it did in Japan. “You need babies for long-term economic prosperity, but in the short turn, they lessen that economic prosperity. This is why governments and the EU do not want to tackle the demographic and abortion issue”, she explained.
Motherhood is under attack!
The novelty of Laetitia Pouliquen’s speech resided in the exposure of motherhood as a baby industry and as an anthropological revolution with the advent of transhumanism through the use of NBIC technologies. The European Parliament seemed unaware of the real danger incurred by mothers and their potential loss of motherhood to the benefit of robots and machinery allowing for the selection of high potential humans and cyborgs that is to say hybrids.
In a few years, safe motherhood will entail eugenism and the design of ‘A la carte’ babies.
DNA sequencing allows for the selection of embryos on the basis of genetic disorders, sex and epigenetic factors.” A la carte” baby business is predicted to be worth 46 billion dollars in India alone around the year 2020 according to a Princeton University study published in 2015. When DNA sequencing was worth 1 billion dollars only 10 years ago, it only costs 1 000$/genome in the US today. And tomorrow it will cost just a handful of dollars to perform both predictive medicine and fabricate ‘A la carte’ babies.
For now, surrogacy is the low technology practice that revolutionizes motherhood. Low to middle-class women rent their womb, sell their menstruation blood for stem cell collection, their oocytes, their milk. 5 million babies were already born through IVF since the mid-70s and the number of children born from a surrogate mother is above 10,000 around the world in constant increase.
When the Artificial Uterus technologies are validated, motherhood will disappear even more: artificial wombs have been tested on various animal species and the latest and most successful experience was on a goat. In 1997 a Tokyo team was able to maintain a goat foetus for 3 weeks in a plastic incubator, threaded with catheters oxygenated blood, nutrients and hormones and removing waste. More recently, Professor Helen Hung-Ching Liu from Weill Cornell Medical College tested implantation outside the womb with “surplus” embryos and succeeded in implanting them in an artificial endometrium for five days. And Laetitia Pouliquen adds that artificial uterus testings are in progress around the World and predicted to be successful by 2050 by some transhumanists.
Post Genderism/Transhumanity/posthumanity –No mothers needed
Laetitia Pouliquen then exposed the Canadian futurist and ethicist, George Dvorsky’s theory on transhumanism and post genderism : “Postgenderists argue that gender is an arbitrary and unnecessary limitation on human potential, and foresee the elimination of involuntary biological and psychological gendering in the human species through the application of neurotechnology, biotechnology and reproductive technologies. […] Assisted reproduction will make it possible for individuals of any sex to reproduce in any combinations they choose, with or without “mothers” and “fathers,” and artificial wombs will make biological wombs unnecessary for reproduction. Greater biological fluidity and psychological androgyny will allow future persons to explore both masculine and feminine aspects of personality.”
Laetitia Pouliquen then concluded with the ethical consequences of transhumanism, this ideology that aims at pushing the limits and contingencies of humanity at the cost of the dignity of mothers and children.
Among the dreadful consequences, she mentioned social injustice in a transhumanist world: children from wealthy families will be selected according to certain standards and frivolous wishes; medication like Synapsyl and brain chip implants will boost those wealthy student’s IQ. Billionaire Elon Musk even said that we have the duty to hybrid our brain not to become the pets of Artificial Intelligent creatures.
She then pointed out to the legal intricacies of transhumanity where the legal definition of birth, death, abortion, filiation will become impossible. She confronted the audience with a reality: too few political leaders comprehend and report the anthropological revolution taking place with transhumanism, despite the recurrent funding of Artificial Intelligence projects by the European Commission with taxpayers’ money. She highlighted that the EU would invest €700 million in Public-Private Partnerships in Robotics (called SPARC) and that the industry itself would provide an additional €2.1 billion. Application areas emphasized by SPARC include manufacturing, healthcare, home care, agriculture, security, cleaning waste, water and air, transport and entertainment.
Indeed, the European Parliament should investigate the upcoming revolution in the fields of medicine, patents, law, legal enforcement, capital investments and insurance with the onset of Artificial Intelligence and Human selection. The European Parliament never questioned the safety nor the ethical implications of such technologies. Against all common sense and the basic principle of precaution, the Delvaux Legislative report by the Juridical Affairs Committee aims at giving specific rights as “electronic persons” ie robots! An urgent need for Biopolitics.
Laetitia Pouliquen concluded with a strong advocacy in favor of civil society, policy makers and religious leaders’ involvement in the debate, currently monopolized by science and money. An ethical debate at the international level should influence political leaders toward a greater recognition of the specific identity of men and women and the inherent human dignity. “Can we afford that the outcome of technology would be to abandon mothers and children in favour of other created species?” Are we going to foster a real BioPolitics with realistic and applicable boundaries between restorative health technologies to heal people and human enhancement to the current uncontrolled and untamed research?”: These are the questions Laetitia Pouliquen wants to leave us with!
Laetitia Pouliquen holds a Bachelor of Business Administration and a Masters in Bioethics. Mother of 4, she initiated a scientific research project on post-abortion trauma and launched a platform on the feminine identity womanattitude.com. While collaborating at Europe for Family, she recently published a book in French : Femme 2.0 – Féminisme et Transhumanisme. This bok was written for a large audience to explain the connections between the 3 political agendas of #mybodymychoice, the gender ideology and transhumanism.
Europe for Family is a European citizen initiative promoting mother-father-child families with the EU institutions.
