“Let no one touch the unborn child”

On 18th December the UN General Assembly passed the moratorium on capital executions. The following day Giuliano Ferrara, editor of Il Foglio an important Italian opinion paper, proposed another moratorium: the moratorium on abortion. His proposal was quite a sensation, not only in Italy, but all over the world. A former communist and activist in the 1968 movement, nowadays labelled as a “devout atheist”, he has raised about the drama of abortion a debate which would have seemed unthinkable not long ago, considering how largely accepted abortion is in all Western societies.

I met with Giuliano Ferrara at the editorial office of Il Foglio, situated on the trafficked Lungotevere in the city centre. I first asked him what made him propose a moratorium on abortion.

Wlodzimierz Redzioch: Why did you propose a moratorium on abortion?

Giuliano Ferrara: On 19th December I proposed a moratorium on abortion, just to draw attention to the fact that abortion is an evil and to mobilize people against this evil. When they ask me in what capacity I did this, I reply that I made this decision because I am a rational human being. The fact that I was a communist till I was in my thirties, that I was born into a communist and atheistic family and grew up in the 1960’s, the fact that I ironically refer to myself as a “devout atheist” is not of any importance. What matters is that I am a rational human being like anybody else. Believers assume that human rational beings are created in the image and resemblance of God, non believers do not perceive man’s innermost nature through faith, but we all must agree that man is endowed with reason and language. Therefore as a rational human being I think that abortion is an evil and that it must be opposed.

WR -…even though in Western culture it is mostly presented as an “achievement of civilization”.

GF - Abortion is not an achievement of civilization. It is an evil which makes the life of men and women worse, unhappier, more desperate and more incapable of hope. It is a violence to the life of the unborn child, of its parents and society as a whole. We therefore need a new approach to the problem of abortion to challenge current opinion.

WR- Why?

GF - Abortion was legalized in all Western countries thirty years ago, much earlier in communist countries. The problem is that legal abortion has become legitimate, in other words it is morally irrelevant. We have come to terms with it, as though it were a form of free choice like any other without cultural, spiritual, ethical or social implications.

WR - Some radical circles are now trying to take a step further through the UN i.e. to have abortion recognized as a basic human right.

GF - It’s true; we are running the risk of seeing abortion recognized as the absolute self determination right. I do not intend to inquire about the reasons for which a woman refuses maternity; I do not think that abortion should be persecuted as a crime or that a woman should be forced to have a child, but this does not appease my conscience or induce me to see abortion as something natural. On the contrary, just because there is freedom of choice – guaranteed by the law in the Western world and, within certain limits, by a sentence in the USA – this freedom should be in favour of life and against abortion regarded as morally indifferent. The more so since in the last thirty years – what with scientific progress, artificial insemination (i.e. the creation of embryos, living beings outside the woman’s body) and with the demographic policies of many Asian states which encourage abortion or even make it compulsory in some cases, abortion has become a dramatic cultural challenge to our sense of humanity. Even worse than abortion as a refusal of maternity is eugenic abortion as a form of birth control which prevents millions of children from being born, as they are no use to social life, the economy or the handing down of male inheritance.

Being against abortion nowadays means exposing a hypocritical humanitarian ideology of human rights which has rightly voted in favour of the abolition of the death penalty in the name of the sacredness of human life. The death penalty has in fact been abolished, no matter if it is the result of tribal justice or the Islamic code, or even of a fair trial in which the defendant has been given opportunity of proving his innocence and is held responsible beyond any reasonable doubt and sentenced to death. Then, I say, if 104 UN countries passed the moratorium on the death penalty, as they held human life sacred, there is even a stronger reason for them to consider that over 1 billion legal abortions have been done over the last 30, 40 years all over the world and that 43 to 50 million abortions are practiced. Also, extracorporeal selection i.e. outside the woman’s body, is gradually replacing therapy, in other words, medical and scientific deontology, which should be about therapy, is turning into a selection method. This is a neo pagan logic which has nothing to do with the Christian roots of European and Western Culture, it is the logic of the Tarpeian Rock (i.e. the rock in the centre of ancient Rome from which people condemned to death were dropped), which must absolutely be refused. I am trying to say all this with great sympathy, without criminalizing women or making them feel guilty, or resorting to any moral blackmail, but those who speak clear about a moral issue like abortion cannot be censured. Nobody can prevent us from expressing our opinions, no matter if we speak by virtue of a strong religious faith and thus recognize the sacred in all its aspects, or if we speak as rational human beings. Rational human beings who do not have a nihilistic or relativistic vision of the world or regard everything as an opinion, but think that there is a truth, can full agree and identify with Christians about the sacredness of life.

WR - Let us now examine in your proposal in greater detail: what are the requests made in your letter to UN secretary general Ban Ki – Moon?

GF - In actual fact we make a simple request to the UN secretary general and to all heads of state. Article 3 of the of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which was signed in Paris on 10th December 1948, exactly 60 years ago, reads as follows: “All individuals have their right to life, freedom and personal safety.” We think that Article 3 should be amended as follows: “All individuals have their right to life, freedom and personal safety from conception to natural death.” It will not be easy to introduce this amendment, but this struggle is worth a life. Besides, I think that lots of things are changing nowadays. Our task is therefore difficult, but not impossible. The first result might be to have all those practices banned whereby several states and governments turn abortion into an instrument of demographic policy and mass contraception, thus preventing millions of children from being born.

WR -Your initiative for a moratorium on abortion came into being in a particular period for the Church, a period coinciding with the celebration of Christmas, the Infant Jesus, the Holy Family, the Holy Innocents, God’s Mother, in other words a period in which everything revolves around the family, maternity, children … How did the Church receive your proposal for a moratorium on abortion at that particular moment?

GF - The Church’s response was, in my opinion, wonderful, as she did not hesitate to take up a battle which is her own. I don’t think of myself as a path breaker. The path breaker is the Church and Christian thinking. The first hint at the Church’s doctrine on abortion is found in Diognetus’ letter, one of the first documents of Christian communities. In this letter the author said that one of differences between Pagans and Christians was the latter did not throw away foetuses. The Church has been preaching the sacredness of life for two thousand years. Obviously, I made my proposal at a moment in which people were particularly responsive, which raised a widespread moral reaction that resulted in letters sent to my paper as well to other papers. On 31st December the Pope’s Vicar for the Diocese of Rome cardinal Ruini in an interview given in the course of a news bulletin declared: “I would appreciate a moratorium on abortion. In addition some aspects of abortion legislation should be changed.” Needless to say, cardinal Ruini is against abortion on principle, but he says that the law must be entirely applied nowadays. Abortion laws do not sanction women’s right to self determination, but provide guidelines for non believers, not for believers, when a woman refuses maternity.

WR - For this reason such laws refer to the protection of life …

GF - In fact, Italian legislation refers to the safeguard of the social value of maternity. Cardinal Ruini then said: “We take you by your word.” If we are to defend life, neonatology, a science which has made considerable progress, enables us to save premature children born between the twenty-second and twenty-third week of gestation which happen to survive after a miscarriage or therapeutic abortion; the gynaecologists of Rome’s four universities have expressed a similar opinion. On the contrary, I think it is a shame that some supporters of laicism, scientists and doctors declared that a premature child must not be reanimated or treated without its parents’ consent. This means moving from the culture of abortion to that of infanticide.

The Church then, through the words of the Pope to the diplomatic corps, of cardinal Bagnasco to the Italian Bishops’ Conference and of cardinal Lopez Trujillo, President of the Pontifical Council for the Family, has accepted the proposal of the moratorium. So have lots of bishops and priests who have written to us. I want to point out, anyway, that the Church has accepted this proposal with fervour, but with wisdom i.e. without raising her voice, trying to persuade interlocutors, without adopting a censorious attitude.

WR - What were the reactions of the lay and liberal world, i.e. the one which is closest to you?

GF - I met with three types of reaction: the first was that of those who distort what you say, who are afraid of an exchange of ideas and prefer invective to dialogue. Unfortunately this was a widespread reaction, triggered off by the state of panic in which the lay and liberal world now finds itself, sine a pro life movement within its ranks has put it in a state of existential, cultural and psychological unease and is therefore perceived as an attack on its identity. Then there are people who make an attempt at dialogue, but are unable to go the full hog; they admit that abortion is the elimination of a living being, but assume that this admission must be without practical implications, since only the pregnant woman can have the last word. They want to keep an objective problem with the single person’s conscience.

WR - Excuse if I interrupt you. Why do women in the Western world decide to abort?

GF - Most women do so because they cannot afford to raise a child, because they perceive their rejection of maternity as the result of their solitude, as they have no man to fall back on, they fear they might be negatively judged for having a child out of wedlock, they see it as an evil action. There is almost never a rejection of maternity pure and simple. Yes, there are women who abort on account of their superficiality, because they assume that nobody can interfere with their career, that everything must be postponed. We move from having sex without giving birth to children to giving birth to children without having sex, in other words, we have sexual intercourse without having children and refusing to have any until we grow old, then we want a child and resort to all possible means, the renting of another woman’s womb included.

Now coming back to the lay world’s reaction, I would like to talk about the third category of people, those who started a real dialogue, some Catholic feminists and the more open minded sectors of the lay world. They are a minority, but I rely on them considerably for this cultural debate to continue and extremist positions to be defeated.

WR - What should one of readers do to support the moratorium?

GF - It is very simple. All he has to do is sign in his place of employment, his school, his parish, within the movements and committees supporting the moratorium. The request addressed to the UN secretary general can be found on several websites; it must be signed and sent to the UN; politicians, members of Parliament, union leaders must be contacted to discuss this proposal; we must consider heroes of our time those who, in centres of aid to life are in contact with pregnant women to give them material, spiritual and psychological support.

WR - At the end of our conversation I would like to thank you for having raised a great debate on abortion in the lay world. The Church, Catholics and pro life movements do not always manage to do this, since they are ignored, hushed down and harshly criticized, as though the defence of life were something “confessional” and therefore irrelevant in today’s world.