Orwellian society update: EU resolution in favour of abortion

Even though Oceania has until recently been at war with Eurasia, Ingsoc has decreed that Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia and with no one else.

From Catholic World News:

European Council calls for end to abortion bans

Strasbourg, Apr. 18, 2008 (CWNews.com) - The parliament of the Council of Europe has approved a non-binding resolution calling for all European nations to legalize abortion.

By a vote of 102-69, the parliament passed a resolution affirming the "right to choose." Proponents of the measure argued that legal bans do not prevent abortion but merely drive the practice underground (an argument that American proponents of legal abortion have confessed they put forward without evidence). Gisela Wurm, the Austrian lawmaker who sponsored the resolution, said that laws against abortion are a form of violence against women.

Representatives of Ireland and Malta -- the European Union countries that maintain legal bars on abortion -- objected vigorously to the resolution.

Melancholicus supposes that the good news in this wretched matter is that the resolution is at least “non-binding”.

For the moment.

But who can say how long it will be before the Council of Europe shall have the power, granted it in law by the constituent nations of the EU, to overrule the laws of any and every member nation? The Treaty of Lisbon is set to go into effect by the end of this year, unless it be stopped (or at least stalled) by the Irish electorate and one of the effects of this impious treaty is to resurrect the Constitution of the European Union that was rejected in referenda by both the French and the Dutch in 2005.

This kind of interference by unelected and unaccountable EU councils and commissions in the internal affairs of sovereign nations is becoming more and more common. As the process of European integration continues to advance, how long shall it be before hitherto sovereign nations are reduced to little more than regional provinces within an over-arching European super-state, a state that shall have supreme legislative and executive power over its constituent “provinces”?

The reader may scoff at such a forecast, but it cannot be denied that this is the direction to which European integration is resolutely committed. How else can such a large, unwieldy institution as the EU, composed of such a multitude of incompatible and disparate parts, be in practical terms managable, except through increasing centralisation?

Is it not passing ironic that the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights declares (chap. 1, article 2.1) that “Everyone has the right to life”, which would appear (in the plain sense of the words at least) to be a disavowal of abortion? Yet the Council of Europe is determined that the killing of the unborn be legally permitted in every constituent state province of the EU — unless of course the “everyone” of the Charter does not include those who have not yet been born, in which case the Council need not ride roughshod over its pretended commitment to human rights.

How much more of our sovereignty shall we Europeans transfer to these sinister institutions? For personal reasons Melancholicus is currently investigating the possibility of permanently relocating to the United States. If this Republic of Ireland continues to fritter away its hard-won freedom by transferring its inalienable sovereignty to a foreign bureaucracy, he shall have a further impetus to flee his homeland. Melancholicus has no desire to live in an Ireland that voluntarily renounces its own statehood and submits to the pitiless encroachment of what is little else than the Roman Empire redivivus. Moreover, in acquiescing in this state of affairs and in abetting the silent conquest of this nation, the Irish government is surely guilty of treason.

Did our fathers really spend all those years, with all their mayhem and misery and cost in lives, fighting against British occupation for nothing?

If you are an Irish citizen, gentle reader, please consider voting No to Lisbon in the forthcoming June referendum. How much more will we let them get away with before we will finally tell them Thus far and no further? With each successive diminution of our liberties, it becomes more difficult to draw a final, uncrossable line.

Where shall we draw that line?

Shall we even draw it at all?