The ethic of responsibility

When I was asked to address the Mini European Assembly composed of youths aged between 16 and 21 on The Right To Reproductive And Sexual Health - An Ethical Issue Or A National Prerogative? I was both enthusiastic and pensive on how to best get such a message across and I was even more thoughtful about the content of the message itself. I wondered what would such a particular age group like to know about sexual and reproductive rights. An age group very receptive to the subject and eager to find out more about an essential component of their intrinsic human personality. As things turned out, they learned from me as much as I learned from them. They were all very well prepared!

It's actually all about love or the lack of it. Not the dispassionate, worldly, glitzy, disposable kind of love, but real love. First of all, one must underline that sexual reproduction involves a natural expression of communication and is a mode of reproduction that has evolved naturally in creation including in man, over another form of reproduction called asexual. But like all good things it has to be used properly to be beneficial. Otherwise it could have the opposite effect for which it was intended and that is why there are certain social and personal norms regulating its use, that people might not hurt themselves and others.

Reproductive rights were first raised at certain international conferences, where ideas sprang up that a woman or a man's body was her/his own and that nobody had the right to interfere with what one did with it. However, sexual and reproductive rights have to be framed within and emanate from fundamental human rights. Particularly one is here concerned with the right to have a family and, intrinsically associated with this right, is the right to life.

Article 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights, clearly states that "Everyone's right to life shall be protected by law". In Maltese law, everyone means, every human subject from fertilisation till natural death. Article 12, on the other hand, deals with the right to marry. "Men and women of marriageable age have the right to marry and to found a family, according to the national laws governing the exercise of these rights." Note that the right to found a family is complementary and consequent to the right to marriage.

One complements the other. It's all about rights, but where there are rights, there are responsibilities. The ethic of responsibility should guide all our efforts in the application and enjoyment of these rights.

Civil society, in its cultural milieu, and also the state have realised throughout the eons that they both have to grant a formal recognition to the institution of the family union, that is, the family. How one defines a family is the subject of much discussion and controversy in today's world, however my model of choice is the one which is based upon natural moral law. This does not retract from our obligation to respect individual choices, but it would be a mistake were the state to bring personal contractual relational obligations of other shades into the public sphere by legalising other forms of inter-relational arrangements on the same footage as marriage between a man and a woman.

Marriage has been shown by social, cultural and evolutionary selection to be the best form of institutional arrangement to protect the couple themselves and also to form the best milieu for the raising of a family. Love with responsibility.

Sex is also about the co-creating of new life! It is in the ambit of a marriage established on the basis of natural law that new life, being an expression of the responsible love between a married couple, is best brought into the world. The ethic of responsibility is very relevant to the power to create life.

It cannot be used haphazardly without there being consequences that have to be carried by all the human individuals concerned, and it is essential that should a couple unwisely choose to ignore the duties which come out of the right to have a loving relationship within the ambit of a secure family, both people do not dispense with their responsibility of not harming each other emotionally or physically and of protecting third human beings that may result from their sexual union.

The right to reproductive and sexual health is both an ethical issue and a national prerogative. At the end of the day it is all about love and responsibility, respect for the family and respect for human life. As for the details, the devil is often in the detail!

Dr Asciak is a Nationalist MP.