And again a delicate question

adminonDecember 29, 2021January 5, 2022Leave a Comment

The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe is once again addressing an ethically controversial ie this week. This time, the position on abortion is on the agenda. In the past, the 636 parliamentarians from the 47 member states of the confederation had already discussed such sensitive ies as euthanasia and, most recently in the fall, creationism.

Now a report by the Austrian Social Democrat Gisela Wurm is up for debate, which calls for exemption from punishment for abortions in all Council of Europe member states. Expected to be voted on Wednesday. The Equality Committee has already approved the bill by a large majority.Wurm points out that abortion is legal in all Council of Europe countries except Andorra, Malta, Ireland and Poland. However, in some cases there are also obstacles in the other countries that make access to abortion difficult. It called for accepting the choice of the women concerned. The draft calls on Council of Europe member states to remove all obstacles, legal or practical, to access to risk-free abortion. The costs of this would have to be covered in an appropriate manner.But the draft report also explicitly states that abortion is not a means of family planning. As many abortions as possible should be avoided. Measures to achieve this included sex education in schools and contraceptives at affordable prices.

Debates in Poland and Mal First reactions to the draft report have already been seen in Poland. There, politicians from the right-wing liberal ruling Civic Platform party and the conservative opposition rejected calls for impunity in abortion cases. The leader of the opposition alliance Left and Democrats (LiD), Wojciech Olejniczak, on the other hand, spoke out in favor of relaxing the ban on abortion. Abortions are exempt from punishment in Poland only after rape, incest, as well as in cases of serious harm to the unborn or danger to the life of the pregnant woman.The vote of the Council of Europe's Committee on Gender Equality was also rejected in Malta. Justice Minister Carmelo Mifsud Bonnici recalled that the decisions of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe are not binding.Malta also negotiated a clause when it joined the EU that EU law should not affect the island state's position on abortion. His country maintains that assistance in emergency situations is better help. Abortion is not a solution, says Mifsud Bonnici.In fact, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe cannot force changes in the law. With their recommendatory character, the panel's votes nevertheless influence the decisions of the Council of Europe's Committee of Ministers, for example in the drafting of legally binding conventions.By Christoph Lennert (KNA)

It is an event as strange as it is memorable. The small Barbara Chapel of St. Stephen's Cathedral in Vienna will receive a sculpture of a beatified nun this Wednesday: Restituta Kafka. At the church-politically exciting appointment, the cathedral priest blesses the work; the artist, who likes to call himself a "Stalinist", is expected with great anticipation: Alfred Hrdlicka. And at the end the amateur brass band of the Viennese trammen will make music.

All this has its meaning. The sculpture by the internationally renowned artist Alfred Hrdlicka honors the Franciscan nun Restituta Kafka, who was beatified in 1998. The Nazis had the nun executed in 1943 at the age of 48 for "aiding the enemy and preparing for high treason". This is how Sister Restituta died between communist streetcar drivers. Cathedral priest Toni Faber says her martyrdom stands as a testimony against the brutalization and inhumanity of the 20th century. Century. And in addition to the streetcar drivers of the present day, relatives of murdered resistance fighters will also come to the cathedral. The fact that the 81-year-old Hrdlicka now created the sculpture, the first modern work of art in the "Steffl" for decades, has a prehistory. It says much about the tense dialogue between church and art, which is far less intense in Austria than in Germany. On Hrdlicka's 80th birthday. On the occasion of Alfred Hrdlicka's 50th birthday last February, the Vienna Cathedral Museum presented a show entitled "The Religious in the Work of Alfred Hrdlicka". A picture from the exhibition "Santa Maria delle Grazie – Lionardo's Last Supper, restored by Pier Paolo Pasolini" was removed from the show after a few weeks – at the request of Cardinal Christoph Schonborn, who judged the work to be "blasphemous or pornographic" in a statement. But cathedral priest Faber managed to get the cardinal into the studio to talk with the artist. From this long conversation grew the commission to make a martyr of the church the subject of a work of art. A martyr – that fits with Hrdlicka's work. The work of Austria's most important living artist revolves around the suffering and maltreated human being. In 2007, a 400-page publication of his own was entitled "The Crucified Man in the Work of Alfred Hrdlicka". Vienna tourists know his Holocaust monument in front of the Albertina in Vienna, the street-scrubbing Jew. In Berlin, the pain of the "Plotzenseer Totentanz" speaks for itself. But Hrdlicka and the Church? The sculptor, in failing health, often refers to himself as a Communist or Stalinist, and occasionally as an atheist. Cathedral priest Faber, however, sees him "one hundred percent as a Christian". When the artist speaks of himself as a Stalinist, it is not in rejection of the metaphysical dimension of man. On the contrary, Hrdlicka's work is always characterized by a deeply religious sentiment. The artist, who had a deep interest in the Bible, was with his whole manner and charisma on the pulse of life and "in this sense also pious, because he faces the fractures and questions of life and is not bigoted in doing so". There is an anecdote from Hrdlicka's childhood. A childhood friend put a Bible in front of his door, rang the bell and ran away. Hrdlicka took and read, and to this day he sometimes seems obsessed with the Bible, finding it the most exciting book of all time. In an interview book on the occasion of his birthday in 2008, published by "Neues Deutschland," he discusses the transgressions that occurred to the church in the course of time. And yet praises the speculative thinking of Christianity "as self-protection against the mindlessness that is so very seductive". Companions report that Hrdlicka crosses himself in certain situations. And his wife calls him a "reinsurer". Vienna's St. Stephen's Cathedral receives a very Viennese work this Wednesday. And the trammen send the brass music.

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) sees deficiencies in the promotion of families in Germany. Although Germany has long been one of the leaders in promoting families, its birth rate is far below the OECD average, according to an OECD report published in Paris on Wednesday. As the most important reason, the organization cites the still inadequate reconciliation of children and career.

The birth rate in Germany, at 1.36 children, is below the OECD average of 1.76 children. In Germany, children often come at the expense of a woman's career and financial resources, according to the OECD report. This is why the desire to have children is postponed longer in Germany than in other OECD countries, especially among academically educated women. He also said that income disparities between the sexes are particularly pronounced in Germany. In addition, women spend twice as much time caring for relatives as men.

Opening hours of kindergartens often too short
Germany is also the only OECD country whose tax system favors single earners in families with children. Furthermore, the opening hours of kindergartens are often too short. Only ten percent of all elementary school students in Germany take advantage of extracurricular activities. Germany is praised for its incentives to involve fathers in parenting.

Until the age of 18. According to statistics, 146 children are born before the age of 60 in Germany.000 euros are spent on education and family policy – the OECD average is 124.000 euros. Relatively low, therefore, is the child poverty rate of 8.3 percent compared to 12.7 percent on average in OECD countries.

Child poverty on the rise in Turkey, Israel, U.S
The OECD is concerned about the increased child poverty in many of its member countries. Child poverty has increased in Turkey, Israel, the United States, Mexico and Poland since the 1990s. OECD Secretary General Angel Gurria demanded that the weakest in society should not have their social benefits cut.

The OECD recommendations also include expanding childcare facilities. Further incentives are also needed to reconcile family and career. On parental leave, she said, there must be incentives for fathers to encourage them to do their share in raising children.

Leave a Reply Cancel reply