{"id":95559,"date":"2021-09-20T23:54:42","date_gmt":"2021-09-21T03:54:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ifamnews.com\/?p=95559"},"modified":"2021-09-23T09:46:35","modified_gmt":"2021-09-23T13:46:35","slug":"unmissable-appeal-to-politicians-more-than-4-500-participants-at-the-berlin-march-for-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ifamnews.com\/en\/unmissable-appeal-to-politicians-more-than-4-500-participants-at-the-berlin-march-for-life","title":{"rendered":"More than 4,500 March for Life in Berlin: an unmistakable appeal to German politicians"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last updated on September 23rd, 2021 at 09:46 am<\/p>\n

Berlin, once again, raised its voice for the protection of life. The March for Life 2021 closed successfully for the 17th<\/sup> time on Saturday. This year, over 4,500 pro-lifers from all over Germany made their way to the state capital to show their support for life shortly before the election.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Representatives of the Catholic Church, the Orthodox Church and the Protestant media were among the participants. The organizer was the Bundesverband Lebensrecht (BVL, National Associated \u201cRight to Life\u201c)<\/a>, an association of 15 organizations protecting life. The March for Life is the largest rally for the protection of life in Germany.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A highlight was the lecture by Helmut Matthies, former editor-in-chief of the evangelical news agency Idea<\/a>. He placed abortion in the larger political context of recent German history and drew a connection to the fall of the Berlin Wall:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAnother serious injustice in the German Democratic Republic was that almost every second child was aborted. […] For the atheistic SED state, a human being was not a human being before birth. Abortion was part of socialist family planning.\u201c<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIllegal parking will be punished, but those who want to have their child killed in the womb will be allowed to do so under very specific conditions,\u201c he added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bishop Rudolf Voderholzer was also present again. As one of the few church dignitaries in Germany, he distinguished himself in standing up for the unborn.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201c[The March] is one of the very few occasions where we do sociopolitical work for the weakest in society. I want to raise my voice for those who don’t have a voice,\u201c he said in an interview with EWTN<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI think just the efforts to disturb us and to insult us in the most obscene ways show that we are pointing out something important and sacred. Pope Francis has repeatedly said that abortion is murder, and he even speaks of murder for hire…You can see that the Holy Father is very serious,\u201c he added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of course, a counter-demonstration also took place. At the forefront of this \u201calliance of death\u201c were organized chaos and the Greens, who had previously spread agitation and fake news about the March: \u201c’The religious and anti-feminist’ [meaning, pro-life activists] will threaten ‘pregnant women and people in counseling centers’. […] And we have to ‘confront’ them, which means nothing else than participate in the disturbances and blockades organized by left-wing radical rioters on that day,\u201c commented the<\/a> Action SOS Life<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the participants, Jan Steenwerth, shared his impression with iFamNews: \u201cI am delighted that, despite all the restrictions caused by the coronavirus measures, more than 4,500 people from all over Germany, including many young ones, gathered around a common cause to put life in the middle of the German capital. This year, too, many passers-by asked what the march was all about, and the reactions were consistently positive. The number of counter-demonstrators during the march this year was extremely small. There were 200\u2013300 of them at the most. This shows that it is becoming more and more difficult to mobilize young people against life.\u201c<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
The Pro-Life Flag\/ (c) Pro-Life Flag Project<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Politically, pro-lifers in Germany get little support. A balance sheet of the Tagespost<\/a> shows that the CDU\/CSU do not mention life protection at all in their program. For the SPD, abortion is \u201cbasic care\u201c. The FDP advocates an \u201cobjective counselling network\u201c, and the abolition of paragraph \u00a7219a of the German Criminal Code. For the Greens, abortion should become part of medical training while the left continues to push for \u201creproductive justice\u201c. The AfD is the only party that promotes a \u201cwelcoming culture for children\u201c and actively advocates for the protection of life in its election manifesto. The party cites moral and demographic reasons for the protection of life: \u201cSociety must convey respect for life and a positive image of marriage and parenthood in the family, schools and the media. This need can be seen in the fact that for years around 100,000 unborn children are killed in Germany every year, which is equivalent to the number of inhabitants of a large city.\u201c<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Abortion may be part of Germany’s “socialist family planning\u201c, but only a couple of hundred protested in the face of another strong defence for life.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":94,"featured_media":95476,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"give_campaign_id":0,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"mc4wp_mailchimp_campaign":[],"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"subtitle":"Abortion may be part of Germany's \"socialist family planning\u201c, but only a couple of hundred protested in the face of another strong defence for life.","format":"standard","video":"","gallery":"","source_name":"","source_url":"","via_name":"","via_url":"","override":[{"template":"1","single_blog_custom":"","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"right-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"top","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_share_counter":"1","show_view_counter":"1","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author":"1","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_category":"1","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","show_prev_next_post":"1","show_popup_post":"1","number_popup_post":"1"}],"image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","sponsored_post_name":"","sponsored_post_url":"","sponsored_post_logo":"","sponsored_post_desc":""},"jnews_primary_category":{"id":"512"},"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[804,805,512],"tags":[475,2940,12532,909,8164,9863],"class_list":["post-95559","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-breaking-news","category-foreground","category-politics","tag-abortion","tag-germany","tag-march-for-life","tag-pro-life-2","tag-protection-of-life-2","tag-right-to-life"],"yoast_head":"\nMore than 4,500 March for Life in Berlin: an unmistakable appeal to German politicians - IFN<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Helmut Matthies: \u201cAbortion was part of socialist family planning\u201c; 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Jan C. Bentz was born and raised in Germany, and graduated from High School in St. Louis (MI) as a foreign exchange student. Professor Bentz holds a doctorate in Philosophy (Dr. phil.) from the Pontifical Athenaeum Regina Apostolorum in Rome, a Master\u2019s in Sacred Art, Architecture, and Liturgy and a Master\u2019s in Church and Religious Studies. During his career as a journalist he has contributed to EWTN in English and German,\u00a0Inside the Vatican,\u00a0The Catholic Herald,\u00a0Catholic News Agency,\u00a0J\u00fcdische Rundschau,\u00a0and\u00a0Nasze Slowo. He worked as a producer for EWTN focusing on the Vatican, the Pope, and Rome in general. His fields of expertise in Philosophy include the history of philosophy and the history of philosophy of art. Prof. Bentz teaches Philosophy for\u00a0The Catholic University of America,\u00a0Christendom College, and\u00a0IES Study Abroad\u00a0in Rome.","url":"https:\/\/ifamnews.com\/en\/author\/jbentzifamnews-com"}]}},"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ifamnews.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95559","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ifamnews.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ifamnews.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ifamnews.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/94"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ifamnews.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=95559"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/ifamnews.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95559\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":96161,"href":"https:\/\/ifamnews.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95559\/revisions\/96161"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ifamnews.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/95476"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ifamnews.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=95559"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ifamnews.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=95559"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ifamnews.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=95559"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}