The majority of respondents to a survey commissioned by Gift of Life are in favour of the introduction of an amendment in the Constitution providing the unborn child with the right to life, the pro-life lobby said in a statement yesterday.

According to Gift of Life, the proposal is backed by 34 of 65 MPs. The survey covered 300 households and was carried out by Informa Consultants.

The survey question was: "Do you agree with the proposed Constitutional amendment to provide the unborn child with the right to life and, therefore, protect Malta further from the possibility of abortion being legalised in the future?"

Those in favour stood at 84.3 per cent; eight per cent voted against; and 7.7 per cent said they were not sure.

"These extremely positive research results clearly show that the proposal has the full backing of the Maltese population," Gift of Life said of the results.

"We are confident that the 7.7 per cent who said they are not sure may in fact not fully understand which proposed amendment is being referred to in the survey question.

"The current proposal is different in that it calls for the unborn child to be clearly given the right to life and is, therefore, different from the first proposal made by Minster Tonio Borg last year."

The NGO, which claims it has collected 20,150 signatures in favour of the pro-life proposal, has called on the government to make good on its declared pro-life stance.

Anyone willing to collect signatures for the pro-life petition may send an SMS on 7970-2481 with their name and address. The NGO will then post a blank petition for the caller to collect signatures that can then be posted back to the sender.