Why the abortion ban should be in the Constitution

Abortion is the silent tragedy of this century. Thousands of children are dying every day. Indeed, every three days, the equivalent of the entire population of Malta is wiped off the face of the earth. Yet to some, abortion is still not an important enough issue that should motivate us to protect our future Maltese generations from this sad global holocaust.

There are a few individuals who claim that they are not against abortion yet they seem to act otherwise. This quite sincerely astounds me.

Forgive me if I attempt to express what seems to be for some people an unusual manner of logic. If, for the sake of argument, I was one of the many in Malta, of whom incidentally I am, who are totally against the abuse of and cruelty towards defenceless animals, then a normal human being would be rationally correct in expecting me to be appalled if I found out that an animal was mistreated in some terrible way in Malta.

You would be correct also in assuming that I would be even more appalled if I discovered that the animal was tortured in full view of, say, members of a local animal rights group, who apparently did nothing to defend the poor creature that was being brutalised. You would also be quite right to ask why the animal rights group did not lift a finger to protect the poor thing.

Now why would a scenario like this one bother you at all? It would bother you simply because something was not quite right in the course of events of this fictitious story. What in fact would be bothering you is that this animal rights group did not seem to be what is termed as being "congruent". In other words they are not living up to what they claim to be.

Now it would be quite understandable if they claimed that they had in fact been restrained in some physical manner from intervening to assist the poor animal, but you would certainly question their intentions if they simply said that they did not want to get ruffled up by a mob of brainless twits who take great pleasure torturing animals.

Being congruent in my dictionary still means that I act in a harmonious manner with what I claim to be or profess. Therefore, if I am completely against abortion and I think that it is murder I consequently think that it should be made harder to introduce. So I act in a compatible manner and agree that making abortion a crime should be entrenched in the Constitution. I would be incongruent if I were against abortion, but I do not think that we should do all we can to protect our island from it being introduced in the future. So I act in some contrasting manner.

Some have recently attempted to convince intelligent readers that to be incongruent in their warped logic is completely acceptable in today's world of relativism. They claim that we should not entrench the law against abortion in the Constitution, because this will impinge on the civil rights of those who may one day possibly want to legalise it. But yet they claim to be against abortion themselves.

Any intelligent human will have a hard time understanding this kind of logic. Some claim that other matters in our political environment are more important than the life of the unborn. Some claim that abortion is not important enough to include in the Constitution and therefore by this logic, I should conclude that we must remove the mention of the Maltese flag from the Constitution also, because this too is hardly as important as the life of a baby. Should we not also remove the mention of the flag of Malta from the Constitution in case Maltese citizens in the distant future may want to change its design?

Being congruent would mean that any individual who is truly against abortion, would consequently want to ensure that all that could be done to prevent abortion from one day coming to Malta because of a pro-abortion culture is done.

I have to question here if those who are acting in this manner really know what abortion is. Do they know the facts, have they ever seen an abortion? Have they witnessed the last moments of a wriggling aborted baby in a cold metal Petri dish in an abortionist's clinic?

Because if they really are aware of what this debate is actually about, I am convinced that many would think again before being so immediately convinced that the constitution of Malta is not the place for this important matter.

We must remember that the entrenchment of the abortion law in the Constitution simply makes it just that much harder but crucially, never impossible for abortion to be introduced in Malta in future. Any future generation could still introduce abortion if they so wished. It would, however, take a two-thirds majority to do this. Today, all it takes is a simple majority and in simple language, this is all that is being proposed.

I am sincerely forced to ask, why is this proposal so extremely worrying for some individuals who are flooding the newspapers with a flurry of panic and opinions. So far, the main reasons they provide seem to be based on nothing more than fuzzy reasoning about future women's rights, the meaning of the Constitution of Malta and the problem of denying a future generation the right to have introduce abortion.

They forget that what we are actually talking about here is the entrenchment in the Constitution of Malta of the human rights and lives of those defenceless human babies that cry for our protection from the womb. Their arguments continue to fall on everything else except the real matter of the lives of babies who may die in the womb of their mothers in future Malta if we do not act today.

And what better time to act than when there is a full consensus in our country that abortion is wrong? It seems that their arguments seem to revolve around a cocktail of rhetoric, spiced by a good measure of some political bias and in some cases one may even detect the distant echoes of a developing pro-abortion lobby who are desperately trying to organize themselves.

Eighty-eight per cent of the Maltese population are in favour of this proposal being entrenched in the Constitution because they are still congruent and conscientiously clear about what is black and white. These people are the backbone of Maltese society and they are the ones who make Malta that safe and caring place it still is today.

They are the ones who sadly, don't write to the papers because they truly do not understand what the problem is with wanting to protect Maltese children from a future that has legalised abortion. And frankly, they also expect Government and Opposition to see it their way too.

They simply cannot see the problem with including the prohibition of what they believe to be an act of merciless murder in the Constitution and using all the legal measures available today to protect Malta from a mentality change towards abortion in generations to come.

Some individuals sneer at those who are in favour of this laudable proposal. A few even fall as low as to use the very taboo that they claim exists about abortion to protect their own image and reputation, lest anyone dare say that they are in favour of abortion. Fortunately they are dealing with mature thinking readers who know a smokescreen when they see one and will not be fooled into believing their flat arguments.

Anyone who is still congruent today is at risk of being called a fundamentalist. Some having even gone as far as to publicly insult the pro-life lobby as well as our brave political leaders who may actually be agreeing on a fundamental and not a fundamentalist common belief. Readers ought to remember that where abortion laws are the most relaxed, the general public opinion on abortion is more relaxed and accepted, and in those countries where it is more rigid, the general opinion is more conservative.

The analogy one must remember is this, when slavery was finally abolished by law, the following generations began to look at slavery as a despicable act.

The truth is that the laws of a country have a direct bearing on the general attitude and moral point of view on the subject that the laws is concerned with. Making it harder for abortion to be introduced in Malta, will in effect, continue to send a clear message to our future generations, that abortion is indeed very wrong. Future governments can always overturn the law and introduce abortion all the same; it would simply be harder than it is today.

Murder and drug trafficking are illegal in most of the civilized world but the stench of abortion is not. Therefore the matter is not as clear-cut as the anti-constitutional amendment clan claims that it is. Malta has an immense duty towards its future generations to do all it can, as would any sound mother or father, to protect their children from hurting themselves.

Unfortunately, a few believe that this matter is not important enough and so they stamp their feet in disapproval as they smell that there is a chance that democracy may win the day. All that this does is to diverge attention from what should be the focus of the matter at stake here, an opportunity that may never present itself again to save the lives of thousands of unborn Maltese lives in the future.

One who claims to be a "good" person is one who goes out and actually makes the effort and does "good". This is what is understood by 88 per cent of Maltese citizens as being congruent.