Abortion opposes right to life

Malta’s blanket ban on abortion has been criticised for at least a decade. Some say that, despite agreeing that a foetus enjoys the right to life, a blanket ban on abortion is not justified. This is a very thought-provoking statement that merits further discussion.

Should Malta remove its blanket ban on abortion in the name of free choice? The answer will obviously depend on who we, as the people of Malta, believe should be defended. Who is in need of most protection?The women or the vulnerable unborn?

As G. P. Koulk says: “If the unborn is not a human person, no justification for abortion is necessary. However, if the unborn is a human person, no justification is adequate”.

It is an established scientific fact, without any doubt, that life starts at conception. Science is on the pro-life side in this aspect, even though it makes no constraints on how we should treat this nascent human life.

The pro-life position has to be the relentless defence of human life from conception on the basis of human equality. Francis J. Beckwith, in his book Defending Life, makes the following argument: “The human being from conception is a fully fledged member of the human community. It is prima facie morally wrong to kill any member of the human community. Every successful abortion kills an unborn entity, a fully-fledged member of the human community. Therefore, every successful abortion is prima facie morally wrong ”.

Of course, for those who do not care about the unborn child, including famous institutions within the United Nations, abortion is a ‘right’, mostly premised on the faulty argument of unsafe abortions.

Bernard Nathanson, one of the original leaders of the American abortion choice movement who later turned pro-life, publicly admitted that he and others intentionally fabricated the number of women who died as a result of illegal abortions.

Rita Joseph, in Human Rights and the Unborn Child, refers to published UN documents (December 1996) that highlight the development of a blueprint to reinterpret the human rights treaties to accommodate abortion and to remove legal protection from the child at risk of abortion. The plan was to endorse procured abortion by reinterpreting “recognised rights, to which the States are already committed ”( p302).

Playing word games seems to dull our senses to the gravity of the horrific numbers of unborn children murdered before birth by abortion worldwide.

Abortion is not a human right, neither is it therapeutic. By definition, a procured abortion is the wilful termination of a human pregnancy, that is,the choice to kill a unborn human being.

A quick search on the internet on abortion methods would duly inform anyone of the barbaric choices one could choose to kill innocent human life. So the question arises: what happens in the extremely rare case when measures to save a pregnant woman’s life place her foetus at risk?

In this case, according to Dianne N. Irving, there are two different and separate moral questions that arise. “One concerns abortion procedures, the other concerns other medical actions or procedures which could be taken in order to save the life of the mother (and vice versa) when urgent and valid medical circumstances arise.

The resolution lies in seeing the moral distinction between these two questions and then properly applying the well-established principle of double effect.

“The principle of double effect evolved in order to address just these types of difficult moral dilemmas – in this case where both of the lives of those affected are innocent and, yet, something must be done or will happen which inevitably will endanger one of these two innocent lives. The obvious application for our purposes here is when a woman, who is herself an innocent human being, and whose human life is precious and must be respected, is pregnant with an unborn child, who is likewise an innocent human being (from fertilisation onwards) and whose life is also precious and must be respected. Since, as natural law theory holds, one may never directly intend to kill an innocent human being.”

At this point, it is useful to make “a moral distinction between inherently bad actions (e.g., abortion) and inherently good (or neutral) medical actions which are permitted, even though bad effects would result, in order to save the life of the mother (e.g., the giving of chemotherapy treatments or the removal of a cancerous uterus, etc.).

Another moral distinction is between direct and indirect voluntary actions (that is, beween directly willing an evil and indirectly allowing an evil to take place).” In natural law, there are three determinants of a human action that determine its rightness or wrongness and all three determinants must be good in order for an action to be considered good. For the purposes of this argument, let us take the case of a woman who decides to abort her child,and the case of a pregnant woman with a cancerous uterus.

1. The act itself (what the agent wills), which is good, evil or neutral (indifferent) by its very nature. For example, the act of abortion is per se evil for it kills an innocent human life; the acts of administering chemotherapy or performing a hysterectomy would be good if done for therapeutic reasons.

2. The motive or intention (consciously willed), which is what the agent wants to achieve by the act – the end, purpose or goal of the action, that is the reason why the action is performed.For example, doing something to kill an unborn human being or to cure a deadly disease.

3. The circumstances, which are the accidental surroundings of the act (which include the consequences of the act. For example, there are no other medical treatments available).

In short, a pregnant woman who is faced with the grim reality of impending death short of the use of, say, chemotherapy or hysterectomy, may use these and other morally licit medical treatments and procedures for the reasonably grave reason of saving her life, as long as the death of her unborn child (1) is not directly intended as the end purpose of using these proceduresand (2) is not the means by which her life is saved but only allowed or permitted to happen as an accidental by-product of these medical actions and no other reasonable medical treatment is available.

However, the directly intended death of an unborn child by means of procured abortion remains morally indefensible.

Malta’s anti-abortion law protects the humanity of the unborn child whose unjust killing is never justified. Our blanket ban on abortion underlines the seriousness of abortion and the obligations that we have to the most vulnerable and defenseless members of the human family.