The Assembly of Associations for Life, which integrates more than 140 civil society organizations, and the NEOS Foundation have held an event in their conference cycle at the Mutua de Madrid with the title “We risk our lives. The Soul of Europe”, a call in defense of life in the face of the path taken by the EU that seeks to include abortion in its Charter of Fundamental Rights. NEOS was attended by representatives of different Spanish and European civil society associations who wanted to share their points of view in the fight against abortion before a packed auditorium.
Josep Miró i Ardèvol, coordinator of the Assembly for Life, Dignity, and Freedom, was in charge of opening the meeting. The president of e-Cristians also stated that “this is the beginning of a wave in favor of life that will sweep through Europe.” Miró i Ardèvol has stated that «abortion is destructive because it morally corrodes society by destroying the strongest bond, that of the mother’s love for the engendered child. Furthermore, it is a demographic suicide, since in Spain more people die than are born and, despite this, there is already 1 abortion every 3 births. Finally, one-year abortions in Spain destroy 2% of GDP in human capital, much more than the average potential growth in the coming years.
Pablo Siegrist, vice president of the European Federation One of Us, has encouraged mobilization against European institutions that are drifting from the culture of death in their resolutions.
Jaime Mayor Oreja, president of the Neos Foundation, began his speech with a brief reference to the seriousness of what happened in the last week: ETA’s victory in the elections in the Basque Country and Sánchez’s announcement to continue leading the Government and encouraged an understanding between PP and Vox, necessary to stop “the Balkanization of Spain.”
Jaime Mayor Oreja denounced that the European Union wants to be at the forefront of progressivism with the praise of abortion as a cornerstone in its Charter of Fundamental Rights, in the face of the probable change to a conservative incumbent in the White House. The former minister stressed: «The European Union has never been a tactic to glorify the culture of death; The EU was born to embrace the culture of life in the face of European wars, it was the expression of a soul. However, today, increasingly, it has a body – Council, Commission, Parliament – but no soul. The president of NEOS warned that there will be no regeneration of the EU without recovering that soul and claimed the sense of transcendence. Finally, he urged to recognize the Rights of the unborn and to join millions of Europeans in this fight.
María Calvo, writer and university professor and member of the NEOS board, warned of the denaturalization of women in recent decades: “We are made to welcome life, to bring life to the world, not to bring death” and demanded the need to motherize the world, for us to become “human” again, with the help of the divine. The professor concluded that motherhood is the donation of the body out of love so that it is inhabited by an otherness that transcends us. This new creature contains within itself an enormous transformative power and hope: the generation of a new life is always the transformation without return of the face of the world.
María San Gil, vice president of NEOS and director of the Observatory of Victims of Terrorism, was in charge of introducing the philosopher, writer and director of the Philanthropos Institute, Fabrice Hadjadj. French, of Jewish parents, atheist first and converted to Catholicism by choice, he is one of the most notable contemporary Catholic intellectuals. His work has an ingenious, deep and bold style that makes converts and strengthens faith, while being a medicine against hopelessness.
Fabrice Hadjadj closed the event with a presentation around the title of this meeting: «Is it possible to interpret “We risk our lives” while we are, in fact, risking our lives?». This title opposes absorbing the serious in the game, or absorbing the game in the serious. In the first case, everything must become entertainment, that is, Luddism. In the second, absorbing the game seriously is utilitarianism, everything has to be useful. Luddism and utilitarianism are the two poles between which we oscillate, and they are understood to get rid of the newborn and the elderly, since both the one who has just been born and the one who is dying are neither operational nor fun.
Hadjadj recalled that the soul of Europe, in the moments of its greatest vitality, has known how to keep together faith and reason, hope and lucidity, tradition and adventure. And today Europe is willing to abandon itself to the dislocation of a deadly technology. For the French philosopher, the combat we face requires courage: “not only risking one’s life for justice and truth, but risking it, showing that the greatest danger is not risking anything, not giving and accompanying life until the end”
The panel of speakers to talk about the soul of Europe was made up of representatives of European society: Alexandra Linder, president of the German Federation for Life and member of One of Us; Nicola Speranza, general secretary of FAFCE; Margarita de la Pisa, MEP of the European Parliament for Vox, and José María Beneyto, director of the Institute of European Studies at the CEU San Pablo University. This panel was moderated by Patricia Santos, editor-in-chief of El Debate in Brussels.
