Sustainable development and the unborn child

Forging a strategy for sustainable development" ran The Sunday Times' front page headline on April 23.

The report on the outcome of the national conference on sustainable development held the previous day at the Mediterranean Conference Centre quoted the Prime Minister as saying: "Sustainable development, which ensures future generations may live, means that we need to change our way of life."

The National Commission for Sustainable Development (NCSD) chaired by the Prime Minister, which drew up the report discussed by the conference, was set up to ensure that development does not only yield to short-term gain but also to a better quality of life in the long term.

"Quality life for the unborn child" ran the heading of a "Talking Point" article on the back page of The Times of April 2.

The womb is the child's first world, his first environment. How he experiences it, as friendly or hostile, also creates personality and character predispositions.

Apparently in the local sustainable development thinking scenario, the unborn child, the beginner in each successive generation, is not being considered in his own right, not even by the Church Environment Commission, even though the conference declared that sustainable development "ensures that future generations may live".

Paediatricians in many parts of the world contend that innocent children are being devastated by alcohol; that binge drinking does great harm to a developing baby and that society is today creating a group of children who will be unemployable. They become adults who cannot function. Prenatal alcohol exposure is a major cause of destroyed human potential for an enormous number of people.

At present, an undisclosed number of unborn children in Malta and Gozo may be suffering from grievous bodily harm - physical, mental or emotional - because of the consumption of drugs, alcohol and tobacco by their parents, in marriage and outside it during, or before, pregnancy. Unfortunately local official statistics do not show these facts clearly yet, especially in connection with alcohol or tobacco. They should.

On September 8, 2005 the UK Daily Mail reported on its front page that research had revealed that "babies in the womb were being exposed to cocktails of toxic chemicals and that their blood was swimming with dangerous compounds found in everyday household cleaners, perfumes and even pans and furniture".

There are fears also that would-be mothers and pregnant women are being exposed to chemical and toxic substances at workplaces, and unknowingly even in their own homes, with great harm to them and their unborn children.

Dr Philip Camilleri, consultant oncologist at Northampton General Hospital in UK, writing in this paper on December 10, 2005, about exhaust fumes and their link to cancer, declared: "The most striking association I have come across is the link between the incidence of childhood acute leukemia and the parental exposure to exhaust fumes around the time of conception, as a result of damage to the sperm DNA." He urged the powers that be to think before routing large volumes of traffic through residentail areas.

It is not known if any studies have been, or are being, carried out in Malta to establish the connections between harm to our unborn child and drinking, smoking, and drug-taking among our young people. It is not known, either, to what extent the harmful effects of toxic substances and radiation from certain electronic equipment at our places of work, exhaust fumes in our streets and gas emissions in the air are reaching our unborn children, now numbering 4,000 every year.

On December 6, 2005, BBC News carried the story of 27-year-old American Gianna Jenson who was campaigning against abortion in front of the House of Commons in London. A saline solution was injected into Gianna's mother's womb to procure an abortion. Somehow Gianna survived the abortion attempt but she has cerebral palsy as a direct result of the procedure carried out on her in her mother's womb, Gianna's "first world", where her "development" was taking place.

The NCSD should take note also of this wide "development" scenario concerning our unborn children. In the process it should consult our paediaticians and oncologists, especially, who are the ones to relate to it, and to us, on the quality of life of our unborn children according, also, to the principles and criteria of sustainable development - this time wholesome development in the womb. The NCSD should also seek the facts about the state of health of our newborns and act accordingly.

The same facts should reach the Labour Party, to help it adjust its Plan for an Environmental Policy for Malta and Gozo, and the Church Commission on the Environment for its contribution too. In this respect it would be good to know more about the plans of the Green Party as outlined in its leader's contribution on sustainable development published in The Times on April 28.

Tony Mifsud, DSS (Oxon.), former director of the Department of Family Welfare, is the co-ordinator of the Movement for the Rights, Protection and Development of the Unborn Child which embraces 42 national organisations.