European Campaign to protect human embryo gains one million signatures

Last week, 'One of Us' announced that 1 million EU citizens had signed its initiative to protect tiny human lives. 

There will now be an official public hearing on the need to ban EU funding for activities that involve destroying human embryos. 

It's an amazing achievement - and this week, European Commission Vice President Maroš Šefčovič officially congratulated the campaign.

The ‘One of Us’ campaign underlines the moment of conception as the beginning of human life, and aims to prevent any funding of activities which result in the destruction of human embryos, particularly focusing on areas of research, development aid and public health (see previous CMF update by Philippa Taylor  for more detail). 

It was launched in January 2013 by leaders in twenty European countries and follows a European Court of Justice ruling in 2011, in a lawsuit brought by Greenpeace, that human life begins at conception and deserves legal protection (See my previous blogs on the ‘Bruestle Judgement’  here and here).

‘One of Us’ is a European Citizen Initiative, a new method provided in the Treaty of Lisbon for proposing legislation in the European Union. Such an initiative must have the support of at least 7 of the 27 member states and each individual state involved must collect a minimum number of signatures based on its overall population. 

Now that it has gathered one million signatures, the European Parliament is duty-bound to schedule a debate on the issue. With just six weeks to go until the deadline, organisers are keen to boost the total still further - the higher the total, the greater the political and public impact.  

Currently, European policies are at odds with the European Court of Justice decision. Europe today is funding scientific research that destroys and manipulates embryos and funds international groups touting abortion. With the recognition of life from the moment of conception, Europe’s policies would shift in favour of unborn life.

The UK sadly remains woefully under-represented ... Across Europe the initiative has proved very successful - but here in the UK it is yet really to take off. 

How to sign

To take part in this campaign you must be resident in a EU State, be 18 or over and eligible to vote in the European Elections.

To sign the petition you need to go to the ‘One of Us’ website (click here) and follow the few simple instructions. It takes about two minutes from start to finish.

The ‘One of Us’ campaign reminds us that we were all embryos once. But some scientific research activities destroy human embryos. Please help us stop public funding for this research.

Further background

3.8 million human embryos created to produce 122,000 live births – success rate of 3.2%

The moral status of the human embryo – when is a person?