Protecting the unborn child

All of us take for granted the fact that our right to life is clearly and unequivocally protected by the Constitution of Malta. Few realise that we are in a situation where our courts may quite easily interpret article 33 as to not include the right to life of the unborn child. One may wonder what difference this makes. Consider these two cases:

In 1997, a prohibitory injunction was sought by a man who tried to stop his girlfriend from going abroad to have an abortion. One of the arguments put forward before our courts as to why the injunction should not be issued was that the foetus ("little child" in Latin) had no locus standi, meaning that law did not recognise the unborn child.

There was no decision taken on this point because there was an out of court settlement, but that case could very well arise again.

In another equally worrying case in 2000, a man sought an injunction against the Police Commissioner, and called upon the courts to stop the deportation of his pregnant foreign partner because he feared she would be forced to have an abortion when she returned home because of the cultural and religious problems in her country. It will surprise many that the Police Commissioner at the time argued that the unborn was not a person, and this when the woman was in the fourth month of her pregnancy.

Following the Police Commissioner's reasoning the same argument could have been made when the woman was in her ninth month of pregnancy.

Fortunately, in delivering the verdict, the judge in this case expressed a different opinion to that of the Commissioner and upheld the injunction. The point, however, is that, as the law stands today, there is much room for interpretation and when it comes to matters dealing with life, one cannot rely on interpretation.

As the wording of the Constitution stands today, it is not clear whether the same right-to-life provision in article 33 also protects the life of the unborn, even though, when it was first drafted, there probably was no doubt that it did include the unborn child. It is therefore not unrealistic to state that a threat does exist once there is room for interpretation in our laws. The good news is that the vast majority of the Maltese are in favour of the protection of life from conception. It is the right time to do this now precisely because we agree.

The proposed Constitutional amendment will ensure that this element of doubt is finally removed by amending the wording of article 33 to clearly extend the right to life to the unborn from conception. The amendment being considered will be a measure to ensure that the provision on the right to life is complete and a true reflection of what the vastly overwhelming majority of Maltese and Gozitans believe and cherish today.

Once in place, any future pressures to legalise abortion would then require an absolute majority of votes in Parliament and not a simple one-seat majority as it stands today.

Whenever the battle in favour of abortion erupted elsewhere in our world, we have heard the same old arguments being used time and time again. Malta has heard them all although some novel ones have also been concocted locally. The old favourite of the pro-abortion camp is the argument of "choice", the argument that a woman has a right to choose over her own body when it comes to deciding to give birth to or else kill her baby.

This argument is laden with deceit. It is a despicable attempt to trivialise the value of all human life, including that of the mother, to nothing more than just one other choice in a series of mundane, routine choices we make every day; from choosing what colour to wear in the morning, to the route home one selects at the end of the day.

Interestingly, the argument of choice is used without ever mentioning what the choice is in favour of. Clearly, it is the choice to kill a baby who, in turn, has no choice - to say nothing of the all too frequent emotional, physical and spiritual desolation it heaps upon former mothers.

We have witnessed various attempts by the same few individuals to divert people's attention from the seriousness of the matter at hand. Obscene suggestions have been made, one claiming that constitutionally protecting the unborn child is somehow "undemocratic"; naturally, the whole foundation for this position also rotates about the idea that an amendment would limit the - wait for it - "choices" of future generations.

Probably the most incredulous argument to be penned yet is a recent one, which claims that as nobody wants abortion in Malta today, and as no political party has abortion on their agenda, Gift of Life should not bother campaigning. This statement is ludicrous and I doubt that this opinion emanates simply from a position of sheer ignorance.

It is like saying that as nobody in Malta agrees with murder, why bother with having the right to life provision in our Constitution in the first place? Should we not blindly trust the people not to murder each other?

Evidently, some self-styled intellectuals don't think that prevention is better than cure. In their mad scramble to derail, they are prepared to use just about any argument, no matter how incredulous this may be, to prevent the unborn child being given the right to life. Evidently, the few critics of this proposal are eager to create a controversy, where in fact there is none.

It is precisely because there is such a massive consensus among our politicians and citizens in Malta today that the amendment is indeed so timely. Rejecting such core values would be the same as rejecting what fundamentally makes us Maltese. This amendment will simply provide the unborn child with the protection the vast majority agree it deserves - nothing more and nothing less.

Mr Vincenti is chief executive officer of the Gift of Life Foundation.