Let there always be life

On the occasion of Pro-Life Day, tomorrow, it seems appropriate to comment further on the recent constitutional proposal that seemed to raise the media's hackles.

The matter of social problems relating to child abuse, prostitution, gay marriages and teenage pregnancies was raised and described as deserving more urgent attention than the growing debate on abortion. It was suggested that Parliament should concern itself with safeguarding the interests of the living before those of the unborn. In fact, quite apart from the implication that the unborn child is, somehow, not living, I find it impossible to justify why society should not safeguard the interests of the unborn as well as those of the rest of the population.

The difference between abortion and the earlier list of social issues is that, in Malta, we have not yet adopted a European attitude towards abortion as we have done with the other problems. We are, however, in the process of adopting all the moral indifference towards these issues that Europe has long embraced and it is only a question of time before we apply this attitude to the practice of abortion too. We are already being subjected to the entire gamut of sleazy arguments and deceptive conjectures that have characterised the entire thrust of the pro-abortion movement worldwide. It will not be long before the proponents of this hideous business feel ready to embark upon the next, more open, phase of their campaign.

Virtually every country in the world that has legislated in favour of abortion first experienced an era of false security, in which the predominant belief was that this could not happen to them. In the United States alone, in 1970, abortion proposals were defeated in two separate states within a short span of time. The general feeling throughout the country was that abortion was a dead issue. Only three years later, the infamous Roe v Wade judgment was passed. Today, any form of abortion is available on demand in the US. The sequence of events in European countries is remarkably similar.

This puts Malta in a unique position. As a consequence of the wealth of historical and analytical information available to us, we are in a position to pre-empt the inevitable attempts to introduce abortion into this country and the form these will take. It is up to us to identify and grasp this opportunity while we still have time. Our worst enemy at this juncture is complacency.

A successful conclusion to the proposal being petitioned will not, by any means, guarantee the permanent exclusion of abortion from this country but it will make it that much harder to introduce. This is the key principle of the proposal.

The subject of democracy, insofar as it relates to the binding effect of a change in the Constitution on future generations, has also risen various times. Statements have been made, on different occasions, declaiming the sacredness of democracy and of our Constitution. This is, of course, nonsense. It is not the institutions of democracy and the Constitution that are sacred but, rather, it is the principles they uphold that are sacred. If a better means of safeguarding these principles were to be devised, both democracy and the Constitution could, quite happily, be ditched overnight.

The post-war concept of democracy is no longer what it once was and the principle of a people getting exactly what they want is not as simple as it may once have sounded. The imposition of taxation is probably the simplest rebuttal of this position but, more interestingly, let us imagine, for one moment, that a voting majority were to demand the re-introduction of slavery. Would anyone seriously argue that democratically-elected legislators would be obliged to comply? Clearly, there exists a more profound and unchanging law that binds human society or, at the very least, a human society that has not abandoned all notion of morality.

We have before us an opportunity that was never granted to many - that of putting into effect realistic and effective safeguards against a violation of that most sacred of all human rights, the right to life itself. If this means nothing to us, we can dress up our reluctance to act in as many guises as we please. If, however, we truly believe that this is an evil that must be resisted, then act we must.

This is not a time to be sitting on the fence.