The aim of the Women’s Rights Foundation (WRF) to save women from unwanted or ill-timed pregnancies must attract the sympathy and support of anyone who tried to understand what it is like for a woman to go through such an experience.
Whether this follows the unspeakably harrowing experience of rape, or the effects of a pregnancy that disrupts a living situation and life plans, whether or not within a stable and supportive relationship, the effect can be shattering.
WRF insist that Malta should help save women from such dangers by making available the morning-after pill (MAP). In spite of the existence of normal contraceptives, or of not having previously intended to have sexual relations, the sudden threat of a mistimed pregnancy can occur. Women can in such a case be saved by MAP, which WRF see as an emergency contraceptive.
Unfortunately, WRF build up their defence on two questionable arguments. The argument disregards the value of human life and plays on the wording of the law. They claim the law prohibits the abortion of a pregnancy, while the morning after pill prevents the pregnancy in the first place. So MAP breaks no Maltese law and should be permitted.
The way WRF put their argument gives the message that they do not recognise any rights for existing unborn human individuals - embryos. Stopping a human individual from implanting is like stopping feeding a child: it deprives that living individual from the ordinary means that protect him from death.
Allowing an unethical practice in one country does not give the right to do the same in another
It is a play on words to see no problem if a human life is aborted by preventing the pregnancy that alone can keep it alive.
This is very dangerous ground. They seem to be telling us that they care about the law, they care about women’s freedom to control reproduction, but are not showing similar caring for the life of the embryo.
Their second questionable type of argument can be called the ‘Hey, what about us?’ argument. If richer people can go to Sicily for an abortion, and poorer people cannot afford to, then this is discrimination. So everybody should have such rights in Malta.
This is like saying that British law should stop prohibiting people from going on paedophile sex tourism because this is not prohibited by Maltese law. It could even be stretched to saying that, since a Saudi man is allowed to execute his wife if she meets with another man, this ‘right’ should be introduced in other countries too.
Allowing an unethical practice in one country does not give the right to do the same in another. To persuade us, they tell us they are not favouring abortion, but then they defend the aborting of the life of unborn human individuals.
More ominously, their strongest tactic is to stretch a loophole in law or practice into a wide floodgate by shouting the magic word ‘discrimination’. If they want to persuade us that abortion is not their aim, then they need to change their arguments.
In order to rescue women in dire need of emergency contraception in a way that does not harm society, one cannot only care about the wording of the law and disregard the ethics and the science involved.
According to experienced family doctor Michael Asciak, the science of the matter points strongly to important conclusions. There are versions of MAP that can act in two ways. If taken before ovulation, they prevent pregnancy by preventing ovulation – so they act as emergency contraceptive. If taken after ovulation, then they act by preventing implantation: so they act as an abortifacients. Other versions of MAP act only in one way and are purely abortifacient.
Asciak recommends that women requesting MAP of the first type in circumstances such as rape should undergo a medical test to check if ovulation has taken place. If not, this would be medically declared as a case of contraception and MAP allowed (subject to prescription, since it may have harmful side-effects). If ovulation has taken place (or in all requests for MAP of the second version) MAP would be disallowed as an abortifacient.
Will that not be open to abuse? Will not the proponents of abortion want to close an eye to abuse and use it to stretch the inch into a mile?
Yes, there is risk, which is difficult to fully police, though abusing doctors should be held to account. But it is justified by the need to come to the relief of women needing emergency contraception.
One could add that regulations about its availability (for example to risky groups like teenagers) would still require responsible reflection and an unbiased openness to the findings of social research.
The original flag bearers of the WRF campaign are two activists who distinguish themselves by their selfless work for the cause of vulnerable women in a society. It would be great to have such dedicated people on the same side in a campaign that reflects how best to defend the rights of women without snuffing out the rights of the unborn.
This can be achieved through a legal arrangement that makes available emergency contraception but with safeguards against its use for the aborting of human life and with firm safeguards to stop those who want to push and stretch the law to justify what it never intended to permit.