Ivan Padovani (February 9) continues with his hysterical assertions of destruction of human life if and when a woman exercises her right to use a hormone tablet, classified by local and international medical regulatory bodies as emergency contraception, because she wants to avoid an unwanted pregnancy. His same assertions would also apply to various intrauterine contraceptive devices that have been legally used in Malta for at least 20 years.

Whether he wants to accept it or not, the fact remains that international bodies he does not agree with are manned by experts whose main purpose is to help fellow human beings with their problems.

UK medicine started IVF to help childless couples, lambasted by certain groups as unnatural (some theologians claimed at the time the babies had no “souls”) and the British Parliament recently allowed the creation of individuals with the genetic material of three (instead of two) parents. Sounds weird but it prevents transmission of rare, incurable, fatal metabolic diseases.

But coming back to Malta, Padovani needs to accept the fact that we are a parliamentary democracy moulded on the British one and that Maltese society has become more secular since the war. For those who had any doubts about that, the divorce referendum shattered their day dream.

Until we become an Iranian-style theocracy, with clerics running the country and imprisoning and executing dissidents (in the name of God, as in southern Europe’s Inquisition), our Parliament dictates whether or not women in Malta can legally use a hormonal emergency contraceptive tablet.

I accept I’m not going to alter Padovani’s beliefs but neither will he convince me his beliefs are consonant with the attitudes of current mainstream Maltese society.