CxD has adhered to the "Agreement for the Dignity and the Life" promoted and coordinated by the platform E-cristians. Tuesday 17 of June of 2003 was presented in public the Pact in the Center Civic of the Cotxeres of Sants in Barcelona.

Text of the "Agreement for the Dignity and the Life":

Presentation

Life is the most valuable good that we have received. Preserving life and helping others to preserve it is the most important right and the most important duty that we have. Preserving life means among other things to build a culture favorable to life that does not introduce exceptions nor reductions regarding physical nor psychological conditions or legal, social or economical conditions.
Each one has the right to live its own life. Nobody can decide that another life does not have the right to be lived. To preserve human life since the instant of conception until the moment of natural death, to preserve its dignity, its moral, psychic and physical integrity signifies to eradicate, change or improve a series of concrete conditions in our society that impede life or make it difficult.
Therefore and in order to achieve this purpose we propose that citizens become fully aware and act directly to favor respect for life. We also trust that political parties, city councils, regional governments, the Generalitat of Catalonia, and the Central government will give an answer at least to the issues we describe and become fully aware that although all needs and problems cannot be solved we will initiate a very important change and a new culture in favor of life.

I. The family
Family, a consequence emerged from marriage, that is, a public and responsibly assumed bond between a man and a woman in front of society, is the natural and essential element of our society and is entitled to be extremely protected by the former and by the State, specially to ease its set up and to support it in the care and the education of siblings.

1. Family, origin and center of every human life, is seriously affected by the excessive cost of housing, by its scarcity, by lack of housing and by the high price of rents. To have an appropriate home is an utmost condition essential in order to establish families. Therefore, in order to solve this problem, we demand an emergency project for housing construction and housing renovation, aimed to solve this problem at least in its basic levels with the immediate reservation of ground meant to be used for building and with financial aid for that housing access.

2. Spain, and specially the autonomous region of Catalonia, is a developed country with an income comparable to other countries of the European Union. We consider of prime necessity that budgets of the State and of the Generalitat (the Catalan autonomous government) should include, in a term of 3 years, the economic resources necessary to level the family allowances in Spain to the average of those in the European Union in 2002.

II. Woman’s dignity

3. Violent behaviors against women, elderly and children, and in general, lack of protection, violence and sexual abuses at home, are a disgraceful blot that physically damages the person and human dignity. Taking into consideration the needs of our society and its awareness on this matter, we believe that the protective measures taken by our governments are absolutely deficient. We uphold that massive support from our society is necessary not only with the participation of those affected but also with everybody else’s. We also demand greater efficiency and an emphatic political standing of all institutions such as governmental offices, town and municipal government, regional governments, the Generalitat, as well as the central government. It is necessary a social agreement of actions and educational and legislative measures to avoid this kind of violence.

4. An expectant mother is usually discriminated at work. We ask that the entitled public administrations, as well as the trade unions, make a more energetic, faster and firmer contribution so that legislation is observed and this mean practice is eradicated. Companies have to scrupulously respect human rights in this subject and have to pay special attention to it because each woman in these circumstances is bearer of a new human being and there is nothing more important than making this coming easier.

We ask the Labor Work Administration for the publication of a list with the names of the companies that disobey the special policies for pregnant women. Likewise we ask for a list of the companies that with their working policy make easy to make compatible family life and working life. Both listings will be made public.

III. Respect for human life

5. Respect for human life and for its development demands peace. We all feel the urge to be builders of peace. It is necessary that we all keep watching, day after day that we promote peace on the places where we live and work, and that we are careful not to yield to egoism, lie, hate and violence that corrupt human relationships and that prevent us from receiving the great gift of peace. We support the repeated statements and messages as well as all the concrete peace initiatives from Pope John Paul II in order to build up Peace regardless political parties or ideas.

6. An abortion is the induced violent death of a human being. We demand from the central government as well as from municipal governments, the development of a program that, combined with the non-governmental organizations, is addressed to inform of all the possibilities and alternatives public and private, for pregnant women in need, before they make the decision of abortion. This information should be one of the prerequisites to be fulfilled before an abortion. We also demand that a help network should be established in order to assist pregnant women in need (due to low income or lack of family help), which would provide practical solutions to their problems, such as flexible hours in their work, economic assistance and sheltered homes.

7. Abortion legislation is infringed on a public and systematic basis not only regarding the fulfillment of the terms provided by law but also regarding the application of legalized assumptions. The media has been denouncing the fraudulent activity of private hospitals that make business out of abortion. We ask from the Public Health Department of the Generalitat and the judges to guarantee the fulfillment of norms that the Criminal Code provides. In the same way because of the usual methods of these private clinics, we demand the constitution of a governmental figure to control these clinics in order to make sure the fulfillment of the law.

8. We also ask that the actual legislation on assisted reproduction guarantees in a more serious way the rights of the embryos, puts limits to the commercial practices of private hospitals when it comes to produce more embryos that those that will be implanted, and also its safeguard so that they are not used as lab materials. For some, a human embryo is not yet a human being, but it is evident that it contains all the genetic potential of a person and, as this, is carrier of the same dignity and deserves the maximum respect.

9. We demand that public institutions, universities and, specially, mass media give realistic information about the situation on the possibilities of embryonic and non-embryonic cells. There is a manipulation in altars of the economic interest that silences investigation and therapeutic applications made in people with mother cells of adults; and presents however, like immediate realities, therapeutic solutions with embryonic mother cells, obtained with the destruction of human embryos when, in fact, medicine does not know any therapeutic treatment with people which have been successful.

IV. Education of children, teenagers and young people based on respect for life and human dignity.

10a) Human values must inspire and impel the education in all the educative centers. This teaching must be oriented, above all, to the promotion of students to become people projected towards the individual and collective good. We ask for that moral and civic education to be a high-priority target in the diverse educative levels of Catalonia and valuable to all the effects. Likewise we request that, in the development of these plans of study, religious education of quality is included in order to help children and the young to seek a sense of transcendence, and to understand in depth the human history in order to find reasons and impulses to build a better society.
b) Each family needs to be able to choose freely the school that better suits its educative project. Scholastic pluralism offers parents the election of regulated teaching institutions that meet the different deep options of the human consciences. This pluralism must be favored and protected because it is an expression and a guarantee of freedom.

11. A proposal for education of human emotional nature and of sexuality, in line with the objectives of laws of education, will be opened to confront all the possible ways to solve the problem of AIDS and precocious pregnancies. Furthermore this proposal will intend to completely form students looking for a true growth of their maturity, to make them be able to establish conscious, constructive and responsible relations with others. By cutting down this sexual education to the promotion of campaigns encouraging the use of condoms and forgetting the psychological aspect implied in a sexual relationship, we ignore this urgent educative necessity in our schools. We demand, from the Departments of Health and Education of the Generalitat, the establishment of educative centers with a true and serious affective-sexual project of education created with the participation of teachers and parents. This project should begin in childhood and should have a continuous development throughout all the educative stages. We request not only a unique educative proposal, but also the consideration of other alternatives which will allow those centers to freely decide which one they will follow. This should go together with economic resources to help those serious citizen initiatives that might have a higher demand in the educative reality of Catalonia.

12. A consequence of the last change on the Spanish criminal code is that parents cannot forbid the practice of sexual relationships to teenagers from the age of 14 on, no matter if it is a homosexual or heterosexual relationship and independently of the age of the partner. We consider that this rule is opposed to the well being adolescents and opposed to common sense, and leaves the responsibility and the duties of the parents in an untenable situation. We demand that the change of this age is to match the age required for a young person in order to have legal responsibility.

13. Normalization of chemical drug addictions, generalization of dangerous use of alcohol during weekends or the combination of both, by young people and, frequently, by teenagers is a fact. We demand the incorporation of a more restrictive legislation and the set up of an effective monitoring of the nocturnal leisure at discos, musical bars and after-hours, that controls age limit access to these establishments and also schedules and distribution of addictive substances in these premises. It is necessary to promote the practice of healthful and creative activities.

14. When legislating or regulating issues in which minors are involved, it is of justice to give them priority as to what is most beneficial for their spiritual and material development, keeping in mind that these aspects are usually their weakest part on their relationship with others.

V. Human life needs dignified conditions to be fully lived

15. Poverty and discrimination attempt against the dignity of the human being. Public administrations, City Councils - specially large ones, like Barcelona -, the Generalitat and the central government are not using enough resources and don’t use properly the ones that they already have. Needs are growing in a faster way than the limited resources that are already available. We request from the administration a coordinated plan of action based under criteria with a subsidiary nature in regards with the social initiative organizations who act in the field of poverty and discrimination, aiming at the disappearance of this social stratum. We demand that none of the public benefits give rise to poverty situations as it actually happens, for example, with some widow's pensions.

16. Immigration is essentially a human reality that requires a real answer. It cannot be treated as a problem of public order or economic resources. We claim from city councils, both of the Generalitat and of the central government, policies of asylums with social, legal, labor and linguistic integration. We also support the recognition of familiar regrouping.

17. Prostitution has developed extraordinarily in our country with the indifference, and even with the facilities of some municipal administrations. Mass media is doing such a publicity of this activity, that it has become an new fact in Europe, contributing with this social blot described by the United Nations as a new way of slavery. Prostitution on a large scale in the known places for sexual contacts is an insult to dignity of people. We demand from the central government and from the Generalitat the adoption of measures in order to eradicate prostitution, and to socially integrate on the labor system those who practice it. We request from the city councils a restrictive policy with tolerance zero to prostitution activities, specially with those that are carried out on great scale like a great organized business for we believe that the Swedish model constitutes a reference guideline to orient the measures to follow.

18. The dignity of the person and her/his life does not depend on its physical, psychical or legal situation. In this sense we demand a review of the policies of prisons, putting an end to overcrowding and adapting prisons to their main purpose, which is the social rehabilitation of prisoners. Without a realistic and systematic education at work, without programs for the social and working reinsertion, prison is a store or a factory of criminals instead of being a recovery center for citizens.

VI. Death, the last act of life

19. The right to die with dignity consists of the right of each human being to be treated like a person, to be respected, to be taken care of, and to have his needs taken care of. One might experience a feeling of fear of death, but it is not because of the inevitable fact of dying but because of a situation of suffering and solitude.

20. Palliative care is are a set of measures directed to attenuate the suffering of the patient and of its family. They affirm life and consider death as part of a natural process within life itself. These resources don’t intend to fasten neither to delay death, but to integrate all its physical, psychological and spiritual aspects of the dying human beings. These resources try to give an answer to diverse problems that are present when someone dies. We have to exhort society to develop more and better ways to be with and to take care of people who are dying. It is necessary that we all participate in this human task: doctors, sanitary personnel, relatives, friends and volunteers.

VII. The relevance of television on the education of values related to human life

21. We ask for the examination of the programs on TV. At this moment the contents and the schedules are harmful to children. In these times, in which parents (both, the mother and the father) might be working, and children remain alone at home for many hours, it is necessary to review the contents of TV programs, with the intention of avoiding those films, shows, and so on, that might promote violence or inadequate social and sexual attitudes for the age of the minor.

22. Television has such influence on family life that there is a special responsibility to it. We request that television networks follow a behavior code which, respecting their share of audience and interests, are compatible with the family as a whole during the days and schedules when it gets together. Public powers have to create a criterion for the performance of televisions in these aspects, just like it has been done and regulated in other concrete questions. Television can actively contribute to knowledge, and use of correct language and rich expressions. TV is able to improve education and communication between the people. We ask for this way of behavior that will put and end to the actual denigration in which our television incurs progressively.

23. Respect for the religious fact is a fundamental element in the conscience and, therefore, in the dignity of people. On this matter, we demand the application of the criteria of the Catalonia Broadcasting Council, approved on May 9th of 2002, and we also ask this institution to enforce public TV to use this criterion, because, if not, its credibility in audio-visual matters will be irreparably damaged.

24. Public televisions, taking into consideration that they are being supported with the money of all the citizens, have the strict obligation to follow the above-mentioned duties and become an ethic reference for this field.