Abortion and the Constitution (2)

Once again, the pro-life movement along with Michael Asciak and 88 per cent of the Maltese population have been labelled as Taliban and fundamentalists. Based on personal understanding of what is morally right and wrong, Kenneth Wain (Good Science, Bad Morals and Entrenchment, August 18) has called the protection of the unborn child by our Constitution an anti-democratic move.

We could almost agree with the professor had we been discussing the choice to grow potatoes in one's front garden but respectfully, we are discussing the life of a human being in its most defenceless stages. The entrenchment is a measure to protect the third group of persons in this debate, the ones who have "no-choice"; the ones who would be the overall losers in this whole affair. The proposed entrenchment is not, as the professor suggests, an attempt at restricting the choice of the ones who do have a voice and a choice, but the protection of those who do not - the victims of that so-called choice. Prof. Wain also said, and I quote, "Social Darwinists believe that the natural law about the survival of the fittest means that only the fittest should survive but I don't think many of us would go with this conclusion". Abortions are often carried out overseas because the child is indeed not "fit" by social norms to live as it may be disabled. Indeed children in the UK have been brutally murdered under the banner of choice because of a deformity such as cleft lip or palate, a condition rectifiable by surgery today.

We are dealing with a liberal trend of thought that truly believes that the right to choose outweighs society's duty to protect. It is as though the manmade "god" of democracy would be eternally offended should we mere humans show an act of compassion towards our own kind. Democracy is not the ultimate law. Indeed democracy is far from perfect but it is the best system we have. The ultimate law is love, an impossible concept to grasp without a formed and informed conscience. It is for this reason that the entrenchment is a grave matter of conscience; the sister of love. There are many reasons why the vast majority of Maltese believe that protecting the unborn child in some form through our Constitution is a just move, and not all of these are faith-based reasons. Moreover, if a person's motivation is also based on a belief in God, then those who hold this view should not be isolated as though their reasons are flawed in some manner.

Prof. Wain said: "They (Parliament) should ask themselves how future generations would judge them." Our future sons and daughters would most certainly be thankful to be alive if they could by some manipulation of time and space, see what may have become of them had the majority's wishes not been acted upon by our Members of Parliament today. Future generations may still overturn the entrenchment if they so wish; naturally this would take a majority to do, and this would be democracy at its best.

Prof. Wain concludes that entrenching the anti-abortion law would somehow set a precedent and that as a result, we will witness some endless flow of majority demands to entrench other morally contentious issues. He asks "am I being alarmist?". We believe he is. Like the Maltese majority, we still know what is right and I also know what is wrong.

Prof. Wain may rest assured that the matter of euthanasia comes well within our sphere of interest and that contrary to his understanding and very much unlike the protection of the unborn child, the protection of human life is already written into the Maltese Constitution in Article 23 and so the matter of euthanasia is a non-issue.