About 600 people took part in a demonstration against abortion, euthanasia and surrogate motherhood in Brussels on Sunday afternoon.
The “March for Life”, organised by the Clara Life association, started from Poelaert Square, in front of the Palace of Justice, and returned there. According to the police, around 60 counter-demonstrators also turned up, but no incidents occurred.
The organisers of the protest said they feared that abortion would soon be recognised as a constitutional right.
“The US Supreme Court reversed its erroneous decision 40 years after ‘Roe v. Wade’ and clearly recognised that there is no constitutional right to abortion,” they noted. “This gives us hope, but in Belgium, public activism is expected to lead to abortion being recognised as a constitutional right. A proposal to this effect has already been submitted.”
The protesters mobilised for to call for the denial of the right to an abortion, and called for attention to be focused “on clear and concrete ways that place real solutions at the centre of women’s lives, for themselves and for their unborn child”.
The group places emphasis not only on the lives of unborn children, but also on the elderly, sick, and infirm. This is why they are calling for a reform of the euthanasia control commission and rejecting the extension of the euthanasia law.
Clara Life is, finally, also opposed to surrogacy. Surrogacy is not legally regulated in Belgium; it is neither prohibited nor authorized. The Civil Code declares that the woman who has given birth is the legal mother.
“A few years ago, it was still condemned by the European Parliament, but recently there has been an attempt to impose surrogate motherhood through the back door to all European member states by obliging each country to recognise surrogate parenthood when it has been established in another member state and is legal there,” the organisation points out.
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It therefore calls on the Commission to abandon these plans and calls on the Belgian Parliament to “clearly state that surrogate motherhood is a violation of the rights of the child and of the principle of non-commercialisation of the human body”.
The European Commission has also called on the Belgian Parliament to “clearly state that surrogate motherhood is a violation of the rights of the child and of the principle of non-commercialisation of the human body”.
