Tuesday, 25th March 2008
Call for free choice
Government resolute on anti-abortion stand
Malta may not be represented at the Council of Europe (CoE) when it meets next month to discuss a resolution calling on member states to decriminalise abortion if they have not already done so.
The CoE resolution, presented by the Committee on Equal Opportunities for Women and Men, proposes that women must be offered the conditions of a free and enlightened choice.
It invites member states to lift restrictions that hinder access to safe abortion by creating the appropriate conditions for health, medical and psychological care and offering suitable financial cover.
The report is to be discussed during a plenary session between April 14 and 18 but, as with all other CoE resolutions, would not be legally binding if approved.
Justice and Home Affairs Minister Carmelo Mifsud Bonnici said yesterday that if Parliament is not reconvened by the time the resolution is debated, Malta would not be able to have its representative at the plenary once the representative has to be appointed by Parliament.
If Parliament is convened by then, the issue, Dr Mifsud Bonnici said, would be given importance and a representative would be sent to present Malta's views on the matter.
He pointed out that, since this was a Council of Europe and not an EU resolution, it would not be binding on Malta even if it were approved, as was likely.
Malta would retain its stand against abortion, so much as that, in the case of the EU, it had a protocol ensuring that no EU treaty or legislation shall affect the application of national legislation on abortion in Malta.
Malta was unsure about a number of premises made in the CoE resolution, including the statement that abortion was an issue of women's choice.
Malta, Dr Mifsud Bonnici insisted, was looking more at strengthening support structures for it believed it made more sense to have the necessary tools to assist people facing certain difficulties.
It absolutely did not see abortion as a solution.
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Comments
Our physical bodies cannot exist without our spirits united to it. Death is nothing more than the separation of the body from the spirit.
Abortion separates the body from the spirit and the body dies. Who doesn't get this?
Not only does the body of a baby die, but the light in the aborting mother goes out and by extension brings great sorrow to society.
Want proof? Look around. Fight valiantly. We know that God triumphs in the end and pray for the consecration of Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary so that Heaven's will can reign on earth.
God Bless Malta.
people have to submit ( psychological support ) to Jewish mysticism with / without
their consent, but abortion should become an open doorway
for all. It's ironic, coincidently,
that many jews cannot decide
if their people are a nation, a
race, or whatever, but somehow
the mysticism of psychiatry may
console someone who has had
an abortion.
If the Maltese are seriously concerned about unborn life, they should better not use the term "pro-life". Because the international "pro-life" movement sounds more negative even than abortion itself. In my country it's the people who harass any woman passing by a clinic offering abortions, while AFAIK in the USA they have even killed doctors performing abortions and mostly favour death penalty. So what "life"?!?
Thankfully, Malta still listens to the truth and won’t buy these cheap inventions.
Great majority of people refrain from committing murder or rape or theft not because they are illegal, but because we strongly believe they are the wrong and immoral. Otherwise we would not be living in a civilized world if people have the natural inclination to commit those horrendous crimes, irrespective of laws. However we need state protection against harm done by others - the fundamental aspect of the modern state and rule of law.
I am strongly in favour of legalizing drugs. It is a victimless crime. The demand for drugs never subsided because of its illegality – on the contrary supply cannot cope with demand. On the other hand, crime of any sort is abundant because of the illegality of many victimless crimes. If society wants to rid itself of organized and petty crime, warlords in Afghanistan and Latin America, and mafia in Europe, the only solution is legalization (controlled and regulated) of drugs. Keeping it illegal for the sake of having the law, knowing it does deter supply and consumption, is hypocrisy in my opinion.
I am against abortion, of any kind and form. So there is no need to convince me on the virtue of life and the unborn child. Empirical evidence in Europe and Latin America however show that only in countries with regulated and controlled means of abortion can terminations be reduced, whilst securing women from dangerous consequences of illicit practice.
Then, with something which there is no argument about - the plastic soft drink bottles - we were too cowardly to ask for exception.
We are the pharisees who tried to stone Mary Magdalene.
"It will be hard to tell a child that his father is a rapist" - so kill the child, then you don't have to tell him anything. Nice way to solve that particular problem.
"It is better to legalise abortion to get rid of clandestine back-street ones which might harm the mother". Why stop there? Why don't we legalize murder in any form. We can't have people lying in wait for other people in a dark alley! They might hurt themselves, fumbling in the dark! Murders have always existed and always will - so let us save the cops some work and legalise that, shall we? People will always exceed the speed limit, so lets scrap that as well. People always cheated on their income tax returns and always will given half a chance - do away with the tax compliance unit - what are you waiting for?
This is not a case of imposing your ideas on others - this is a matter of LIFE and DEATH to thousands of human beings. If humanity has temporarily lost its senses with regards to abortion, why should we follow soot.
It's humanly immoral to exercise a 'right' by eliminating someone else's. But of course, an unborn child has no money to hire a lawyer to defend his rights - ergo he HAS no rights - silly me.
As someone said before: it is not right to impose ideas on others but then again, is it right to impose death on others? Are ideas more important than life? I don't think so.
On the other hand as a male I can never understand what being pregnant and giving birth feels like .
I can never understand how it feels to have a living being , blood of my blood growing up inside my womb .
I cannot imagine what an unborn child, unable to speak for himself, would say, if he was forced NOT to enter this world of ours and grow up , play with other children ,go to school, have a partner, have kids, live a healthy life and retire at an old age.
If one had to give birth to a child and allow this child grow up to the age of say 8 or 10 and then tell the child... 'NOW it is time for you to end your life here because you should NOT have been born in the first place so I am giving you a chance to say your last words before you leave this world'.
What will that child answer ? What if YOU were that child ?
Having illegal abortion does not deter the amount of people that perform abortion (although you cannot say that it saves babies.
BUT, having abortion illegal and providing an adequate amount of support does reduce the number of abortions performed.
With the same logic, Mr. Caruana, the government should legalise drugs so that drug addicts can have a reliable and safe access to drugs (since as everyone knows, drugs are usually mixed with even more unsafe substances, such as rat poison, so that it results in more profit to the seller). In both cases (abortion and drugs), someone is harmed (even killed) but both cases can be avoided with adequate support.
If the pro-life activists and believers think that criminalizing abortion will reduce terminations, they would better think again.
The greatest destroyer of peace is abortion because if a mother can kill her own child, what is left for me to kill you and you to kill me? There is nothing between.
One has to acknowledge that from conception the fetus is a human being and he/she has got all the rights that every human being has on earth.
If we do not respect the begining of human life, next we might also try to introduce practices that will terminate the life of all those who with them we can't live a happy life. They are an obstacle to our daily routine.
Remember we are all here today only because of that moment when our mother concieved us.
I can't understand what you mean by saying that I "don't care two figs for the millions of the most vulnerable members of society being killed off by all means of horrendous ways!" As a matter of fact I'm not pro-abortion, but unlike you I don't feel I have got the right to impose my personal view on others, let alone criminalise them by law. Abortions always happened and will always happen, so legal abortions are still better than backstreet abortions and all the related hypocrisy.
For me it's you to behave in a "hypocritical" way when you attack me for referring to rape. For a woman who has never been in a relationship this unfortunately is the ONE AND ONLY way to become pregnant, and not the most improbable one. I can't know what I would do in this case, but please, Ms Micallef, tell me... have you ever thought what you would tell such a child who his father is, and what it would mean to any person to find out he/she is the fruit of a crime? I assure you I'd prefer not to live than to be burdened with such a knowledge for all my life...
I myself am against abortion personally BUT contrary to what i wish, what i believe is wrong and right, what is considered murder and what is not, can't be imposed to what other people do in their personal life. Remember people are in different circumstances. And you can't be 100% sure that what you believe is 100% right and should be imposed on people around you.
If it was for me everyone would be vegeterian and bird hunters would be tried for murder because any defenseless creature, remains a defenseless creature, but unfortunately i cant impose my views on others,
i can only express them.
If a woman is given the right to choose to abort a defenseless child, then the whole population should be given the right to murder those who trespass against us. But two wrongs do not make a right.
As such, no abortion should not be a right to anyone whatsoever.
Also, could you please tell me HOW IT IS THE BABY'S FAULT if his father's a monster. Half of that child is your OWN flesh and blood and nobody in their right senses kills their own flesh and blood!
It all boils down to what value you give life - ALL life. Over 90 per cent of the Maltese population still regards abortion as murder and NOBODY has the right to make us legislate in favour of it - not now, not ever. It is not just the prime minister or the priests who are against it, it is the WHOLE NATION bar a few who think they are 'enlightened' and 'modern' by condoning premeditated murder as 'choice' (certainly not for the child) and progress (sich!).
You really can't bully us into any sort of legislation that would debase us to the level of weeding out who we want to let live and who we want to cull before they've even seen the light of day.
That is why we are against the death penalty, that is why we are against all wars, that is why we are against abortion.
To Andy Towler, everyone has the duty to prevent the loss of life.
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It's funny to see that the Council of Europe is trying to uphold fundamental human rights yet it is contradicting itself and denying the most vulnerable of human beings the right to live instead of encouraging governments to support the woman who need all the help they can get (but obviously, since we're humans, we try to get rich and fill our pockets by taking advantage of someone else's desperation).
See what abortion is about: http://www.lifemalta.org/home/
And I agree with Mr Baldacchino. How can men (especially those who have absolutely no experience of married life, i.e. priests) expect a woman/couple to feel love for a monster's offspring?!?
And as it's illegal, do Maltese women really have fewer abortions than others?? Not rather the opposite, as they care less about contraception, too?
Can the prime minister or the Pope for that matter experience the feeling of having a pregnancy initiated by a monster ,carrying inside you a creature with the face you want wipe out of your memory.
Abortion in Malta is for a few people and is not of great importance but what about the membership that the Maltese Government without a Parliamentary meeting is applying again so Malta will be part of the Partnership for Peace which is against Malta's sovereignty and will affect all the Maltese?!? - Dr. John Zammit - Leader ALDM