The European Citizens’ Initiative “One of Us” is now closed, but the final number of signatures remains yet to be verified.
The reason is that many signatures have been collected on paper forms – and the last of these will be reaching the national representatives of the organization committee only in the coming days. This also appears to be the reason behind the sudden surge of signatures reported for several countries, which made some countries (like Estonia, Greece, Cyprus, Ireland and Latvia) reach their respective national quorums just shortly before the deadline.
As things currently stand, there are now 1.781.154 signatures, with the national quota having been reached in 20 out of 28 Member States. It could be that some more signatures will be added in the coming days.
The overwhelming success for the European Citizens’ Initiative “One of Us“, which calls for the EU to stop funding abortions, continues provoking strange (and at times rather laughable) reactions from a shocked and angered abortionist lobby.
The latest such comment stems from the website of the Humanistischer Pressedienst (i.e. the “Humanist Press Service”), a German-language internet outlet of radical atheists. “Humanism” in Europe is a self-chosen euphemism used by militant opponents of human rights (such as the right to life, the freedom of religion, the freedom of conscience, etc.) to describe their anti-human world views.
In a recent post on the Pressedienst’s website, the defeat of the controversial “Estrela Report” in the European Parliament is framed as “a scandal involving the ‘One of Us’ initiative”. Obviously, the “humanists” find it scandalous that anyone not sharing their views should be allowed to utter his opinions, or to win a vote in parliament.
Further on in the post one can read that, if a citizen’s initiative such as “One of Us” can be so successful, the remedy is to change the rules for citizen’s initiative in order to prevent this from happening again. The current rules for such initiatives are “too simple, and too un-bureaucratic”.
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Thus, while the overwhelming majority of citizens and politicians are concerned about the EU’s democratic deficit, the anti-life lobby is concerned about too much democracy. Of course, this is not surprising: rejection of human rights and rejection of democracy go hand in hand, and one would never have expected any other attitude from the self-proclaimed candle bearers of “enlightenment”. But it is new, and quite revelatory, that they make such statements in public. Their annoyance at discovering that their ideology is not shared by many must be very great.
LifeNews Note: J.C. von Krempach, J.D writes for the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute. This article originally appeared in the pro-life group’s Turtle Bay and Beyond blog and is used with permission.
