Sex ed for 4-year-olds, promotes draft EU bill

  • 2013-12-10
  • From wire reports, VILNIUS

Lithuania's Parliament addressed the European Parliament urging it to reject a draft resolution on Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights submitted by MEP Edite Estrela, and to recognize its provisions as harmful to European traditions, law and morality, reports ELTA.

On Tuesday, Dec. 10, 66 MPs voted in favor of the resolution by MEP Edite Estrela, while 14 MPs voted against with 8 abstentions.

The Lithuanian Seimas expressed its deep concern about the provisions of the draft resolution, saying it poses a threat to the constitutional conception of family, constitutional rights and duties of parents to raise their children as honest people and loyal residents and contradicts the law of the European Union.

"Sexual education of children is a very important factor in formation of personality; however, family is the main social institution and its right to raise and educate children must be widely acknowledged, while this process is an integral part of the free will and responsibility of parents," says the resolution.

On Dec. 10 the European Parliament is to vote on this resolution.

According to Renaldas Janciauskas, the representative of Lithuanian Parents Forum, the draft resolution has shocked parents and families not only in Lithuania, but also in the whole of Europe. This resolution promotes sexual education to 4-year-old children, abortion as a fundamental right, attacks the right to conscientious objection, the rights of parents, and calls on the European Union to fund abortion in its Foreign and Development Aid Policy.

"It is obvious that these areas overstep the boundaries of EU competence. Although Lithuanian society is being reassured that it will not be obligatory, who can deny that a ‘nonbinding’ resolution will not be ‘voluntary integrated’ into Lithuania’s legal framework? Such resolutions do not comply with principles of democracy; they more remind one of practices of totalitarian regimes," said Janciauskas.