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World Congress of
Families IV – Follow-Up on Warsaw 2007
It’s now almost three months
since World Congress of Families IV (Warsaw, May 11-13), our most successful
Congress to date.
Here’s an overview of World
Congress of Families IV, by the numbers:
• Participants
– 3,900
• Registered
– 3,300
• Countries Represented
– 64
•
Plenary Session Speakers and
Panelists
– 150 (Click here for a complete list)
• International Journalists
Covering The Congress
– 140
• Exhibitors
– 50
•
Co-sponsors
– 45 (Click here for a list of co-sponsors)
• Languages
– simultaneous translations in Polish, English, Russian, Spanish, French and
German
It’s difficult to capture
the electricity of the Warsaw Congress in a few paragraphs. But we believe these
comments from participants will give you some idea of what our fourth Congress
meant to the international pro-family movement.
“Before the recent World
Congress of Families fades any further in memory, I want to take a moment to
tell you that I thought you did an outstanding job in organizing the event in
Warsaw.” ~Tom Minnery, Senior Vice
President, Focus On The Family
“I feel so blessed
thinking about the Congress in Warsaw. Thank you for giving me the possibility
to be there.”
~Inese Slesere, Member
of the Latvian Parliament
“I must say that
attendance at this Warsaw Congress, a truly momentous mega-event, is something I
shall always cherish.”
~Dr. Farooq
Hassan, Barrister and Professor of Law, Pakistan
“Congratulations over and
over on what you pulled off in Warsaw. It was high-wire walking and balancing,
but it came off well.”
~ Dr. Patrick
Fagan, The Heritage Foundation
“The number of people who
attended was exceptional and the enthusiasm for the effort to strengthen and
defend families was contagious.”
~Lynn D. Wardle, Professor of Law, Brigham Young
University
“Thank you, World
Congress of Families, for asking me to speak and proclaim a message that is
being heard and changing families literally all around the world.”
~Don Schmierer, president of His Servants
For an electronic version of
our special 13-page Warsaw Report, Click
here
To read The Warsaw
Declaration, adopted by World Congress of Families IV,
Click here.
 Mexico
– After legalizing abortion, leftists who control the legislature of the Federal
District of Mexico City are now moving to allow so-called passive euthanasia. If
adopted, terminal patients could refuse medical care. Family members would be
allowed to decide for those who can’t communicate. Two years ago, a
brain-damaged Florida woman named Terri Schiavo was starved to death because a
judge accepted her husband’s claim that she would have wanted to die rather than
live with her disability. Her parents hotly disputed this. If the legislation
passes, how many Mexicans will suffer a similar fate? How long before passive
euthanasia becomes active euthanasia, as it has in the Netherlands, where
patients are being killed to conserve medical resources?
   United States – In a recently decided case, the
U.S. 9th Circuit Appeals Court agreed with the City of Oakland,
Calif. that the term “natural family” was “homophobic,” “disruptive,” and
intended to “create a hostile environment.” Thus, the court ruled, the City
could deny municipal employees access to its electronic bulletin board to
discuss pro-family views, while allowing others to use the system to promote
gay-pride events. Presumably, the 9th Circuit Court believes Article
16 (3) of the United Nation’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights engages in
hate speech by defining the family as society’s “natural and fundamental group
unit.”
Click here to read the WCF
press release of June 29 on the Oakland decision.
 Ireland
– Dublin’s largest pro-life rally in 15 years was
held on July 7. Organized by Youth Defence, the Pro-Life Campaign and the Mother
and Child Campaign, the rally brought thousands to the Irish parliament.
Demonstrators sought to keep the current government true to its campaign promise
not to legislate for abortion or embryonic stem-cell research. Ireland’s 1983
constitution bans abortion, but a 1992 high-court decision calls the prohibition
into question. (The pro-life provision is also under attack by the European
Union and the European Court for Human Rights.) The week before the pro-life
rally, only 80 people showed up at a pro-abortion demonstration. The anti-family
agenda is driven by elites, not the masses.
To read our press release of July
14, commending organizers of Dublin’s pro-life rally,
Click here
 United Kingdom – The Optimum Population Trust
wants Brits to limit family size to save the planet. If parents refuse to do so
voluntarily, the group demands government coercion. In China, coercive
population control has led to forced abortion and sterilization, and
infanticide. The Trust is responding to the recent blip in childbearing in the
U.K., from 1.8 children per woman in 2005 to 1.87 in 2006. (Demographers believe
the trend, due to career women having children later in life, is temporary.) The
current birthrate is still below the 1964 high of 2.93 children per woman, and
well below replacement level (2.11). The Optimum Population Trust claims the
lifetime energy consumption of a child born in Britain today is the equivalent
of 620 round-trip, trans-Atlantic flights. However, besides an “energy
footprint,” a child born in Britain today could develop a new energy source or
make a significant contribution to cleaning up environment. The Trust’s position
is a prescription for national suicide. Even with the current birthrate, absent
massive immigration, Britain’s population will decline with each succeeding
generation.
Click here to read the
WCF press release of July 18.
 “The Natural Family: A Manifesto” by
Allan Carlson and Paul Mero
  A Featured Book Club Selection
The new book by WCF
International Secretary and Howard Center on Family, Religion & Society
President Allan C. Carlson and Paul T. Mero, president of the Sutherland
Institute (a WCF IV co-sponsor), continues to receive critical acclaim. The
Natural Family: A Manifesto was the Editor’s Choice in the July bulletin of
American Compass, a conservative book club associated with the Book-of-The-Month
Club.
Editor Brad Miner notes:
“Allan Carlson and Paul Mero frankly admit that those who should have defended
marriage were AWOL when the full-scale assault on the family began in the
Sixties. More seriously, many of them joined the assault by adopting the very
assumptions – philosophical, social and economic – which have almost
extinguished the family’s traditional legal and social privileges.”
Miner concludes: “The
authors explain why the family is in crisis, the ways in which the natural
family is the source of culture and freedom, and what we can do to preserve the
most fundamental and wholesome relationship on earth. Assured that human nature
is on their side, Carlson and Mero can be both realistic about the family’s
plight and relentlessly optimistic about its future.”
To order The
Natural Family: A Manifesto Click here.
 A Senior Fellow at the
New American Foundation, Philip Longman, Ph.D. is the author of “The Empty
Cradle: How Falling Birthrates Threaten World Prosperity.” Here are a few
excerpts from his remarks, “Falling Human Fertility And The Future Of The
Family.”
“The ongoing global decline in
human birthrates is the single most powerful force affecting the fate of nations
and the future of society in the 21st century.”
“Today in Europe, there are 36%
fewer children under age 5 than there were in 1960. … For the world as a whole,
the absolute number of children aged 0-4 is actually 6 million lower today than
it was in 1990.”
“By 2050, according to one United
Nations projection, there will be 248 million fewer children under 5 in the
world than there are today, and that’s after assuming birthrates rise in the
developed world.”
“A variety of other modern
attitudes also go hand-in-hand with low fertility. In Brazil, for example,
birthrates have dropped, province by province, coincident with the introduction
of television. Today, the number of hours that a Brazilian woman spends watching
television strongly predicts how many children she will have.”
“What’s on Brazilian television?
Mostly domestically produced soap operas, called telenovelas. These soaps
rarely address reproductive issues directly. Instead, they typically depict
wealthy individuals living the high life in big cities. The men are dashing,
lustful, power-hungry and unattached. The women are lithesome, manipulative,
independent and in control of their own bodies. The few who have young children
delegate their care to nannies. The telenovelas thus reinforce a cultural
message that is conveyed as well by many North American and European cultural
exports: that people with wealth and sophistication are the people who have at
most one or two children.”
Click here
for the full text of Longman’s speech.
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