In the name of life

As Malta debates the question of embryo freezing, the Malta Unborn Child Movement yesterday celebrated Pro-Life Day for the fifth consecutive year with a mani-festation and Mass at St John’s Co-Cathedral.

Leading the celebration were movement members, including the Association of Local Councils, the College of Parish Priests, Malta Midwives Association, Cana Movement and the Association of the Order of the Knights of Malta.

Present for the manifestation were also AD civil rights spokes­man Yvonne Arqueros Ebejer, Michelle Muscat, wife of the Labour leader, and the Prime Minister’s wife Kate Gonzi, who were each given a rosary chain with beads in the form of tears containing a foetus.

Reminiscing on her first child’s movement as a foetus, Mrs Arqueros Ebejer said pregnancy was a crucial period both for the mother and the child’s welfare, and the government should reconsider its stand about maternity and paternal leave.

Complementing this statement, Mrs Muscat said she was lucky to be able to celebrate life on a daily basis with her children, adding that more support should be offered to mothers who miscarried.

She insisted hospital regulations had to be sensitive with regard to room allocation, because it was heart-breaking for a woman who has just gone through a miscarriage to sleep next to a pregnant woman.

Mrs Muscat, who conceived twins through IVF, stepped into the current debate on reproductive technology, saying she felt this technique was a miracle in today’s world and that more education was needed about the subject.

Life was precious, challenging and fragile, Mrs Gonzi said, adding that some children were bred in difficult situations, where their conception was not planned, their parents were alcoholics or drug abusers, or they were born with severe disabilities.

In such cases, parents might see abortion as their only way out. However, the choice lay not between whether to abort or not, she said, but whether one accepted the challenge or ran away from it. The choices these mothers made were choices that society made, to the detriment of the same society.

Malta Midwives Association president Nathalie Zammit said every conceived human should be respected and defended, as every baby was God’s creation. She added that midwives played a very important role in God’s creation plan, as they gave pregnant mothers substantial advice on how to take care of their health and the baby’s welfare.

Around 45 organisations form part of MUCM, which three years ago planted the Tree for Life and erected a monument commemorating the first MUCM Charter on the Rights, Protection and Development of the Unborn Child at Mater Dei Hospital.