Robert Browning described motherhood as “the beginning and end of all love”.
Last September 28 2016, WYA Europe members participated at the Conference on the European Day of safe birth and motherhood. The event, held at the European Parliament, was organized by the Association Europe for Family and hosted by MEP Arne Gericke from the German Family Party.
Bioethical expert Laetitia Pouliquen said that motherhood should celebrated as the gift of life and pointed out the dangers of our current path. Firstly, she denounced the existing conditions for mothers in most developed countries: unequal pay, time management, lack of support on the professional world, tax system, etc. These circumstances actively discourage mothers in the midst of an economic and demographic crisis when motherhood is more needed than ever.
In the mean time abortion and contraception are growing with the support of the population control ideology. We can already see the result in an aging population with birth rates below replacement but also in other regional and national issues like eugenism and sex imbalance, a nationwide trauma in China.
In addition, there is also a growing threat brought about by the growing business of surrogacy, which is leading to the commercialization of motherhood. The child, progressively reduced to a commodity in a contract and subjected to conformity, sees a detriment of his right to a father and a mother in favor of an alleged right to have children (Apparently by anyone and under almost any circumstances).
On the scientific field there, there are also a growing number of issues including a trend of granting men the right to feminine attributes like breastfeeding and child bearing. Experimentation with embryos is also sinking deep in the ethical uncertainty with DNA sequence replacement and cloning. There have even been attempts to develop a fetus entirely on an artificial womb. The eventual result is the suppression of women’s role on motherhood and the elimination of alterity, in line with a specific gender agenda.
Although most of these issues affect primarily child bearing and labour, motherhood is much more than that. As Ms Pouliquen explained, motherhood is the very essence of cultural and generational transmission.
The gift of self is a special women’s talent that can not be replaced. This acute sense of others and the capacity to transmit love is the women’s genius. To acknowledge that we need to develop an understanding of bio politics that provides a legal framework, especially on the scientific field. This requires that we engage in an ethical debate and find basic common values which can define what mankind is and what is not.
It is our duty as World Youth Alliance members to protect motherhood and to ensure the right conditions for it are guaranteed for the thriving of human family.
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Written by Fernando Alvarez, a WYA Europe Intern from Spain
