Leo van Doesburg

On the 26 th of April, I had the privilege to meet in the European Parliament in Brussels, students from the European University of Rome. The European University of Rome is a private, legally recognized, Catholic University which is part of a big network of universities widespread in many countries throughout the world. The University’s mission is to form in its students independent personalities that will be driven by Christian principles. 

Last Wednesday, I participated in an event organised by the European Parliament Working Group on Human Dignity with the title "Elderly and Palliative Care", a Group in which I am honored to serve as a Secretary General. It was a very substantive and fruitful meeting. I am confident that the work of the Working Group will continue in a very successful manner. After the meeting, the following press release was issued.

On th e 22nd of March two bombs exploded at Zaventem Brussels National Airport and one bomb at the Maalbeek station. At this moment, more than 30 people have been killed and many are wounded. The terrible images of the blasts, the images of people running for their lives as well as terrifying eye witness accounts are all imprinted on our minds.  My prayers and thoughts are with the families of the people killed in the explosions and with the wounded. But also with the people who were not wounded but are in a shock. May God’s healing hand be on them. In the European Parliament, people were crying. Some of them usually take the underground to Maalbeek which is the underground station closest to the Parliament. There was a pervasive feeling of anger and fear. People were asking questions: “Why did this happen?” and “why can people be so evil to each other?”

On the 15th of March, a large demonstration took place in Paris against surrogacy. The protests took place at the entrance of the building where the Health and Social Affairs Committee (SOC) of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) convened to discuss a controversial report on surrogacy. A crowd of a few hundreds of people had gathered outside the building where the meeting was taking place in Paris. Later, a few meters away, feminists from the feminist group Collectif pour le Respect de la Personne (CORP) also organized a demonstration that called the Council of Europe to say NO to all forms of surrogacy and to respect the rights of women and children. Lesbians carried a banner with the slogan “no surrogacy for heterosexuals, nor for homosexuals”.

Petra De Sutter collaborates directly with a commercial surrogacy clinic in India On the 15 th of March, the Social Affairs and Health Committee (SOC) of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) will convene again to vote and discuss on the Report: “Human rights and ethical issues related to surrogacy”. As we saw in a previous post on my blog, the author of this report, Mrs Petra De Sutter, a Belgian parliamentarian and the head of the Department for Reproductive Medicine at the University Hospital of Ghent (a country where surrogacy is legal) is campaigning for creating a legal framework on surrogacy for surrogacy activities she is conducting herself. De spite the fact that these facts have long ago been made public, Mrs De Sutter still remains the rapporteur for this report as an attempt to have a secret vote on the suspicion of conflict of interest failed to gather the necessary majority at SOC.  New information that was revealed in a Huffington pos...

A short review of the ethical and human rights issues related to surrogacy Introduction   On the 2 nd and the 3 rd of May the organization ‘Men having Babies’ (MHB) organized a controversial meeting in Brussels. MHB is an LGBTI (Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transsexual and Intersex) friendly organization that wants to enable gay couples to have children. Of course this is naturally impossible, so they use the services of surrogate mothers who carry the child of one of the men. Simply by browsing on their website  you can see that for a bit more than 100000 US dollars you can proceed with 'obtaining' your own child. Usually these processes take place in developing countries like India. Lately, many groups and movements (especially those that are LGBTI related) are pushing for a legal framework that allows and facilitates surrogacy. For example, the rapporteur on a report on surrogacy by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE); someone who supposedly ha...

The Heads of the Catholic Church and of the Russian Orthodox church met in Cuba and in a 30-point declaration  reaffirmed their commitment to Human Dignity and the Sanctity of Life The declaration makes direct reference among others to three areas of mutual concern. First, it expresses concern about “threats to the inalienable right to life, to the family, to the marriage”. They also condemn the spread of euthanasia practices that cause people to feel that they are a burden on their families and on society in general. Finally, they proclaim their opposition to certain aspects of the use of Biomedical reproduction technology which is presented on a manipulation of human life. Bellow you can see the full article written by the "Parliamentary Network for Critical Issues"