I would like to express my disappointment at how the issue of the morning-after pill has been handled by the Parliamentary Committee for the Family.

I accept the fact that it is within the remit of parliamentary committees to exercise oversight over other public authorities. However, the Medicines Authority was always the best placed to decide on the question of whether the morning-after-pill was an abortifacient or not, as well as on the best practice to be adopted when dispensing this pill.

As things happened, one cannot help but feel that the parliamentary committee was turned into a cheap pulpit from where MPs of various stripes could reassure the public of their immaculate credentials when it comes to reproductive issues.

One was forced to watch with horror as various MPs sought to outdo their peers in increasingly lunatic pronouncements, from Deo Debattista’s morbid outburst “who defines rape?” to Godfrey Farrugia’s adoption of Gift of Life’s proposal to perform an ovulation test before prescribing the pill, just in case it was abortifacient and just in case there were ‘signs of life’ in the mother’s womb.

Having turned the protection of the ‘dignity of human life from conception’ into a fetish, they have ended up annulling the dignity of the woman in question as well.

The central problem with such issues is to balance the rights of the mother with the rights of the child.

As unpalatable as this may sound, this means that different situations will lead to different answers, with sometimes the child’s interests prevailing and in other situations, the mother’s.

This issue was ably handled by those arguing for the introduction of the morning-after pill by successfully skirting the issue of abortion. In this way they might have succeeded in finally making the pill available. But it will not be possible to avoid this question forever.

In fact, it was not long before Luciano Busuttil tried to ride the issue by proposing that ‘life begins at conception’ should be entrenched in the Constitution. This must have pleased the ultra-conservatives, for it is likely to open any future relaxation of the abortion ban to legal challenge.

I suspect that many are open to the idea of relaxing the abortion ban, say in situations of rape, or where there is a serious health risk to the mother. The present reaction has come from the unexpected direction of the Labour backbench and will undoubtedly be supported by Nationalist law-makers. One should remain vigilant, because if this conservative alliance gets its way, discussion of reproductive rights might be blocked for a generation.