Where is the choice in a free abortion?

Advocates of abortion, the merciless killing of a baby within the womb, will attempt to justify the act of abortion by claiming that it is a choice that the woman makes over her own body. These same proponents of abortion also claim to be in favour of women's rights. Nothing can be further from the truth.

Abortion is the choice of one life over another, not a choice on whether to be or not to be pregnant. The baby's heart begins beating at around the third week of pregnancy. At nine weeks old, the age when 90 per cent of abortions take place, the child is fully formed and simply grows in maturity and size. How can the destruction of this precious little child ever be justified?

Proponents of abortion prefer to divert attention away from the baby. They say that they are concerned with the woman. This woman they refer to is one of the two patients that entered the abortion clinic. One of these patients, generally the baby, dies during the intervention. Sometimes but rarely, both patients die.

In one of the most common forms of abortion, the baby is ripped from the safety of its mother's womb. A small plastic tube about the size of a straw is connected to a vacuum-like machine. The abortionist suctions around the uterus, tearing away the baby from its lining, into pieces small enough to pass through the tube and into the machine. Dismembered foetal parts are then reassembled to assure a complete abortion.

Proponents of abortion claim that it is safe. They conveniently forget to inform women that the death rate associated with abortion is three times higher than with childbirth. They forget to inform women that there is a chance that she may have heavy haemorrhaging, or cervical laceration, the tearing of the opening to the womb, which occurs in five per cent of women.

Our Spanish and their Maltese partners forget to mention the risk of puncture or tearing of the womb, which can occur, but go unnoticed and untreated. Not to mention the risk of infection - which ranges from mild to fatal; sometimes caused by pieces of the baby being left inside the womb; If the bleeding is severe enough, or if the puncture in the womb is severe, it may become necessary to remove the uterus (hysterectomy). Must we conclude that free abortions in Spain are free from these risks?

What about the increased risk of future ectopic (tubal) pregnancy, which goes up by 30 per cent after one abortion; 160 per cent after two or more abortions; this causes the loss of the baby and your fallopian tube, thereby reducing your chance of conceiving another baby. What about sterility, infertility and the increased risk of breast cancer?

We never heard the doctor from Spain talk about the psychological disturbances caused by abortion, including feelings of guilt, depression, feelings of detachment from others, increased drug or alcohol abuse, nightmares and flashbacks, insomnia and suicidal thoughts. These can occur even years after the abortion. And just in case the reader thinks that these are statistics taken from abortions carried out by some back street quack in Sicily, they are not - these are statistics taken from the chains of well known abortion clinics in Europe, where abortions, we are told, are supposedly done safely.

If one truly cares about women, they will not lead them down the sure road of disaster. From our experience with women who are contemplating having an abortion, all they need is time to be able to make up their minds on their own, without the father of the baby blackmailing her that he will leave her if she has her child. Far from their friends and even sometimes their parents pushing them into having an abortion, as though pregnancy is a disease and abortion is the cure. Those who go ahead with the abortion are then forgotten about and left to deal with their ugly secret all alone.

The fact remains, that whether it is legal or not, women still suffer in silence, knowing that they have done what they feel is unforgivable. They are angry at the world that took their child, making them believe at the time that it was a choice and a right she had. The abortionist would have capitalised on her fear when she was pregnant offering her a "way out", confirming what she wants desperately to believe, even if every cell in her body is telling her the opposite, that what lay in her womb is nothing more than a blob of cells and not a formed child.

There is nothing pro-women about tricking women into believing that abortion will just wipe it all away. I can think of nothing more anti-woman than men pushing abortion as an issue to solve their own worries of becoming a father. Those who propose to offer abortion to Maltese women, whether at a charge or not, are guilty of the serious crime of attempting to turn truth into a lie and a lie into a truth, they are guilty of the worst offence possible, "the murder of truth".

Mr Vincenti is CEO of the pro-life foundation Gift of Life.