Divorce and relationship breakdown (1)

Please permit me to comment briefly on Ranier Fsadni’s excellent article of May 12 (Divorce on Planet Zog).

Dr Fsadni admirably demolishes some of the partial and selective misinformation being peddled by the anti-divorce movement. He specifically highlights the misleading answers in the Church’s national parish magazine, Flimkien, in its question and answer pull-out last month.

He also kindly refers to the report by The Public Policy Institute, “or Worse, For Better: Remarriage After Legal Separation, of which I was the lead author. (He himself was a colleague on the think tank at the time, and contributed most constructively to the report.)

Indeed, the reference in his article to “divorce laws generally contributing to raising breakdown rates” was, as I recall, one of the important points made by him during the preparation of our report. What the specific section of my report said in full, however, is that: “Divorce may be an independent variable in increasing fragility in marriage in other countries as one report asserts, but a multiple array of cultural, social and economic factors lie behind this rise in other countries. Blaming it on the divorce law is as misleading as saying the law is only catering to pre-existing demand”.

The report in question (Gonzales and Vittanen: Divorce Legislation And Their Effects In 18 European Countries) concluded that “the combined effect of all legal reforms that took place in Europe between 1960 and 2002 amount to about 20 per cent of the increase in divorce rates”. In other words, unlike Malta, divorce already existed in these countries and reforms were made, invariably to ease the process of divorce. Clearly, if the law is made easier you must expect an increase in the future rate. But the legislation being proposed for Malta is extremely restrictive, based on the Irish legislation. After almost 14 years of divorce experience, Ireland has one of the lowest divorce rates in the world.

The point I am making is to establish clarity, and in order to illustrate that on this complex issue the question is whether an apprehension, a fear, that the situation might be made worse would justify the continuation of an actual and existing injustice in Maltese society. To which the report rightly gives the categoric answer no.