America's Emerging Family Problems Not New to World, Says Expert
WASHINGTON – The United States is coming to grips with some of the family problems that other countries have long faced, a pro-family expert said Monday at a press conference for the upcoming World Congress of Families IV.
Dr. Janice Crouse, senior fellow of Concerned Women for America's (CWA) Beverly LaHaye Institute, said that issues such as sex trafficking and sex selection abortion are emerging problems in the United States which have long occurred in other countries.
"Sex trafficking is an issue that has affected the whole world with more than 700,000 victims," noted Crouse, who has been involved in the Congress since the Geneva gathering in 1999. "Here in the United States we have just begun to recognize there are victims in this country right under our noses – some 50,000 a year.
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"That is an issue that we are just coming to grips with here; it has been more of an international concern for the United States and now it is becoming a very personal concern."
The World Congress of Families is the only regular and ongoing international gathering of activists, scholars and politicians in support of the family. This year the Congress will take place on May 11-13 in Warsaw, Poland where more than 3,000 pro-family activists from over 65 countries are expected to attend.
"The fact is most of the world's people are pro-marriage, pro-family," declared Bill Saunders, Family Research Council's senior fellow for Human Life and Bioethics.
"They resent what is trying to be done to them by these international bureaucrats and the World Congress of Families allows them to join together, resist that and advance a very positive vision of marriage and family," he added.
Christian co-sponsors of the Congress include the American Family Association, Family Research Council, Focus on the Family, Concerned Women for America, and Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute.
Speakers at Monday's press conference explained that Poland was chosen as the host of the conference because it is the largest nation in Europe which has supported traditional marriage and human life in the midst of strong pressure from international government bodies.
The president of Poland, Lech Kaczynski, will give the opening address at the World Congress of Families.
The Congress will discuss issues including gender rights or family rights; demographic winter as the new population crisis; the family home as the center of upbringing and education; how abortion undermines the family; the impact of pornography on family unity; and the harm of "same-sex marriage."
The World Congress of Families was founded in 1997 by Dr. Allan Carlson, president of The Howard Center for Family, Religion & Society. The Congress offers an opportunity for pro-family organizations around the world to network and seek to restore the "natural family as the fundamental social unit and seedbed of a civil society."
