Editorial

The campaign set in motion by the Minister of Justice and Home Affairs, Tonio Borg, and the pro life lobby to entrench the outlawing of abortion in the Constitution has served to make the public focus their attention on the rights of the unborn.

Abortion is illegal in Malta and most of us pride ourselves in upholding Catholic values that revere the dignity of human life from the moment of conception. Although the precise moment of "ensoulment" is unclear, the Catholic Church insists that the benefit of the doubt must be given to the earliest possible stage of individual existence, which is the moment of fertilisation of the ovum. Indeed, no distinction is made between foetuses having different gestational ages either from a biological or a moral viewpoint.

Against this background of a better appreciation of the rights of the unborn, a call made in Parliament in mid-March by Labour MP Justyne Caruana for a review of the system whereby all miscarried foetuses are buried together at the Addolorata Cemetery in November has been quite a shock to public opinion.

Here again, there seems to be a sharp dichotomy between professed values and the manner in which we behave. One would expect that once public opinion advocates the personhood of the foetus, society would treat him/her with the human dignity this implies.

Unfortunately, in practice, the attitude at times adopted by some when dealing with the dead leaves a lot to be desired. Many a bereaved person can recount bad experiences during a funeral, especially during the burial ceremony where certain behaviour betrays a callous disregard for the sanctity of the dead and the anguish of their loved ones.

Such compassionless attitude surely pales into insignificance when compared with the handling of miscarried foetuses where the bereaved already have to deal with the tragedy of having lost a sibling, especially if this happens to be a first-born.

One augurs that Dr Caruana's brave decision to recount her heartrending personal experience will indeed lead to give the right to parents to bury their miscarried foetuses.

She rightly insisted that every couple should have the right to bury its own foetus in the family grave. She rightly questions why such foetuses should be buried collectively and on the same date. For those who lose a child just after the November burial this means an agonising wait of almost a year.

Nationalist MP Michael Asciak explained that death certificates for babies lost due to miscarriage are not issued as they are not recorded. Doing so would distort death statistics. However, he proposed a solution to this bureaucratic impasse and along with his fellow Nationalist MP Franco Galea, he upheld and backed Dr Caruana in her plea to have miscarried foetuses consigned to parents for burial as they thought fit.

Bureaucracy should not be allowed to impose illogical, let alone inhumane, burdens and constraints on people. After all, regulations and procedures are there to serve the public and not vice versa.

If we really believe in the ensoulment and human dignity of the unborn, this sad situation should be addressed forthwith. The bereaved parents are already cruelly distressed by the premature loss of a child. To further burden their grief is inhumanly heartless. And that is putting it mildly.

Besides inaugurating monuments to the unborn child and fretting about changes to the Constitution, the pro life lobby should leave no stone unturned to support Dr Caruana's appeal in rectifying this intolerable situation.