It is important to clarify some of the misconceptions that have recently been penned in this paper by some pro-choice and therefore pro-abortion proponents.

Even though some here prefer to distance themselves from this reality, it has become clear the world over that people either fit squarely into the pro-life or into the pro-abortion camp. The argument of being against abortion on a personal level yet in favour of third parties killing the unborn, innocent child has always been flawed.

In the past those in favour of abortion have consistently lost their argument when the focus of the debate was maintained on the innocent life that dies within the womb and the negative impact an abortion has on the mother.

Hence pro-abortion advocates try to steer away from discussing the unborn child and abortion procedures, and focus on the so-called 'choice' aspect. In the face of losing debate after debate, a few years back the pro-abortion camp set out to redesign their public image and message. A concerted global campaign was launched by the pro-abortion movement and they adopted the now rebranded, pro-choice model, complete with an array of confusing semantics, instead.

So where does this pro-choice mentality originate? The feminist movement was initially cajoled into supporting the pro-abortion movement in the United States, having been sold the cheap lie that abortion was a choice that the woman deserved to have. The feminist movement was born more than 200 years ago when Mary Wollstonecraft wrote A Vindication of the Rights of Women.

After decrying the sexual exploitation of women, she condemned those who would "either destroy the embryo in the womb, or cast it off when born". Shortly thereafter, abortion became illegal in the UK.

The now revered feminists of the 19th century were also strongly opposed to abortion because of their belief in the worth of all humans. They knew that women had virtually no rights within the family or the political sphere. But they did not believe abortion was the answer.

Without any known exception, the early American feminists condemned abortion in the strongest possible terms. In Susan B. Anthony's newsletter, The Revolution, abortion was described as "child murder", "infanticide" and "foeticide".

Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who in 1848 organised the first women's rights convention in Seneca Falls, New York, classified abortion as a form of infanticide and said: "When you consider that women have been treated as property, it is degrading to women that we should treat our children as property to be disposed of as we see fit."

Anti-abortion laws enacted in the latter half of the 19th century were a result of advocacy efforts by feminists who worked in an uneasy alliance with the male-dominated medical profession and the mainstream media.

The early feminists understood that, much like today, women resorted to abortion because they were abandoned or pressured by boyfriends, husbands and parents, and lacked financial resources to have a baby on their own.

Ironically, the anti-abortion laws that early feminists worked so hard to enact to protect women and children were the very ones destroyed by the Roe v. Wade decision 100 years later - a decision hailed by the National Organisation for Women (NOW) as the "emancipation of women".

In recent years, pro-abortion campaigners have become truly gifted at using an arsenal of vague yet conflicting arguments, cloaked in a mosaic of semantic juggling. Some examples are words such as "termination", which is another word for abortion, "the product of conception", another word for the aborted parts of the foetus, and "number one", which is a cloaked term used by the abortionist when referring to the dead baby's head, which is the lat part of the child to be removed from the womb in second trimester abortion procedures.

Semantics are designed to take the sting out of the heinousness of abortion and the pro-choice person despises nothing more than being called pro-abortion. Indeed, I suspect that some of our Maltese pro-choicer advocates have bought into the lie of choice also and actually believe the semantics. I am routinely surprised at how vigorously this lot makes their point about choice. Do people make this sort of statement about any other issue? I'm hard pressed to think of examples.

The pro-choice advocates are the only group I can think of that vociferously states that the thing they are fighting for isn't necessarily good; they aren't really "for" it in any general sense, but they defend it anyway.

Not being in favour of abortion but in favour of choice comes part and parcel with the newly emerging "moderate" position on abortion.

Recently, this moderate position was also articulated by Hillary Clinton, who said: "I want to make the tragic choice of abortion as rare as possible in this country."

Now forgive me for proposing something rather radical to the radicals here, but shouldn't we all be doing our best to prevent the "tragic choice" in the first place?

There is far too much rhetoric going on about rights and not nearly enough about duties. It is the duty of every person to protect the weak and defenceless. The weakest being those in the womb as well as the mother to be, who needs encouragement and support, enabling her to see that it is possible to go on and have her child, albeit an unexpected one, despite the odds and the pressures to have an abortion.

Have the pro-choice cluster in Malta given up on these values altogether? They seem to be saying that as we don't have the time for each other and each other's problems, just let them get rid of the problem; they'll get over it in time.

These poor arguments for choice in Malta have been around in the rest of the world for many decades. The fact that a few people in Malta controvert a position does not in itself make that position intrinsically controversial.

People argued for both sides about slavery, racism and genocide too, but that did not make them complex and difficult issues. Moral issues are always terribly complex, said Chesterton - for someone without principles.

Objectivity does not mean abandoning or weakening our convictions. An honest conviction is one arrived at after an open-minded search for truth; a prejudice is one arrived at before. Honesty leads to conviction, not away from it. I wonder just how objective the clan of Maltese "pro-choicers" really are?