I consider myself to be pro-life, pro-choice, and anti-abortion.

I am ‘pro-life' because the criminalisation of abortion actually leads to more deaths since dangerous homemade abortion methods often cause women to die along with the foetus they are trying to abort. Therefore I feel that the real ‘pro-life' stance is one that does not exclude the legalisation of abortion where this can be done in a safe and controlled environment so that, at least, the women are saved.

I am ‘pro-choice' because as a man I feel that I should not be part of a society in which women are forced to have children against their will, and that if they are severely physically, mentally, emotionally or financially ill-prepared to bear a child, and they wind up pregnant anyway, there should be another option.

That being said, I consider myself to be ‘anti-abortion', because as much as I feel that people who commit abortions should not be imprisoned, I will never encourage anyone I love to go through with one. Abortion is very damaging emotionally and is often done at times when the female is particularly vulnerable. I believe abortion should be the very last option and a pregnancy should be terminated only in extreme cases. I strongly feel that there are other options that should be considered and that women should have the chance to weigh out their options objectively, hopefully with the help of psychological experts, at the expense of the government, if necessary.

Having hijacked all the labels of ‘pro-choice', ‘anti-abortion' and ‘pro-life' and twisted them to my advantage, I am left with no words to describe the tens of thousands of Maltese people who think I am crazy because they believe abortion is murder and this should be entrenched into the constitution never to be changed again.

These people are the same ones who write letters to the editor saying we should end this debate once and for all, that we should not let Dr. Rebecca Gomperts speak to our people, that it is shameful of the government or anyone else to discuss abortion in an objective way and that we should close our eyes to the Council of Europe's recommendation and all other information which clearly tells us that the criminalization of abortion is not the best way forward.

The only word I can think of to describe these arguments is ‘antiquated'.

How come it is always the ‘anti-choice' movement that seeks to silence debate rather than engage in it? Are they so insecure in their beliefs?

It seems that they know they will be proven wrong, so they need to hurriedly entrench this into the constitution so that by the time they are proven wrong it would be too late to change.

Wherever you place yourself on the pro-life, pro-choice, anti-abortion, anti-choice spectrum, I encourage you to be firm in your beliefs so that none of us have to be afraid of discussion. To come to the right conclusions we need to have a mature debate strengthened by logic, accurate information, factual medical evidence and an analysis of successes and failures of the abortion policies of other countries, as well as a sense of openness and objectivity.

And once we have set the tone for a proper discussion, let us talk about some points that I have conveniently left out:

What choices and rights does a foetus/baby have?

Why should the foetus/baby have to suffer because of the irresponsibility of its mother's action?

Does the wellbeing of the foetus/baby override the wellbeing of the mother?

Let us see how long we can go on discussing something objectively and maturely, until someone starts trying to bully us out of having this debate.