Thousands of anti-abortion demonstrators turned out for the annual March for Life event in Ottowa, Canada in 2011. Photo: Shutterstock.comThousands of anti-abortion demonstrators turned out for the annual March for Life event in Ottowa, Canada in 2011. Photo: Shutterstock.com

I do not normally read the blog comments beneath my articles: I rarely find them enlightening; and I don’t normally have the time. But knowing that the issue of abortion is an obsession of some in Malta and that the sub-editor’s heading to my article, “The Abortion Issue” would prompt all the usual zealots to crawl out from under their stones, I made an exception.

I was not disappointed. Jan Farrugia, one of the few women to comment, rightly pulled me up for referring to the subject of abortion in Malta as “obsessional compulsive disorder”, whereas as we all know the medical term is “obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD)”.

The truth is I chose the word “obsessional” advisedly because there is a vocal group in Malta who are obsessed by the subject. Like end-time millenarianists who are certain the world is about to end, this group is utterly convinced that abortion is about to be introduced to Malta. No amount of evidence to the contrary will persuade them otherwise. It is a preoccupation that completely occupies their minds. It is obsessional.

When I was in Australia recently, I came across a Muslim leader who said that: “If a hijab shapes the body, it unveils the body like she’s naked… Haram.” He blamed women’s rights groups for undermining Islamic women. Clearly, his ranting was all in the mind.

Some well-meaning people here adopt the same obsessional approach to the non-problem of abortion in Malta.

I described this group as made up in the main of “post-menopausal women and elderly men”. One reader, Edward Mallia, an eminent former scientist who is older than me, accused me of ageism and implied my description was meant to be derogatory. It was not. I simply described what I know of the people who lead the anti-abortion lobbies in Malta. The description is accurate and it is not derogatory.  I am elderly and, given the alternative, it pleases me to know I am still around to express a view – as, indeed, they are.

I have ignored the ad hominem remarks of Mark A. Sammut since, like all such comments, they add nothing to the argument and simply expose a vacuity of thought. But Adrian Padovani and Gerry Cowie, who together with some others are regular commentators on this subject – one might say obsessional – criticised me for not mentioning that Norma McCorvey, the anonymous “Roe” in Roe v Wade, as the US abortion law is known, had become an activist against abortion later in her life.

They were right to do so, even though they overlooked the sentence I wrote which clearly implied she had been “an accidental activist, although a totemic figure to both sides (sic) of the abortion debate”. Later in life she became an Evangelical Christian and eventually a Roman Catholic who argued strongly against abortion.

However, Padovani and Cowie missed the main thrust of my article. It was not a blow by blow account of McCorvey’s sad life, but to remind readers, on International Women’s Day, that “Roe v Wade”, is again an issue in the United States. The confluence of Trump in the White House and his conservative nomination to the US Supreme Court could lead to the issue coming up again.

Farrugia was the only reader to ask a pertinent question: at what stage of gestation does a human life commence? The Roman Catholic faith defines the answer to that question in terms of “ensoulment”. Although the Church has never officially defined when “ensoulment” occurs, Roman Catholics believe that the soul is present from conception. Catholic religion has remained unequivocal on the moral status of the embryo, which has a special standing because of its potential for development to become a human person. It is therefore sacrosanct and inviolable. But the Catholic Church is unique in its position. Other major religions hold different views.

Believers of any faith should not think that they alone can define a nation’s morality

Judaism, which gave us the Ten Commandments, has a wide range of different traditions on this subject, from the ultra-conservative to the most liberal. In general, however, Judaism regards the embryo as containing life “in potential”. But it also holds that the embryo does not have the same status as a human being. For Judaism, life does not begin fully until birth. The Jewish view is that the embryo is not considered inviolable.

The Christian view – except for the Catholic faith and some Evangelicals – holds that human beings are made in the image of God and this forms the basis for the dignity accorded to them. The Church of England recognises that it is inappropriate to speak of a 14-day-old embryo as a person and that it is not inviolable.

Most Muslims believe that ensoulment happens at 120 days, although with the improved understanding of embryological development brought on by modern science some Islamic leaders have suggested that ensoulment takes place at 40 days. From the 4,000-year-old Hindu religion’s perspective, the belief is that the divine spirit enters the body at the seventh month of gestation.

It is clear that with each major religion embracing such a wide range of different views, it is impossible to subscribe to one moral status of the human embryo from a particular religious perspective.

But let us at least agree on the science. An ovum is a living cell, as is a spermatozoon. Both can be described as alive. The cluster of cells which is the embryo is likewise alive. But this is not the same as saying it is a human person or a ‘baby’.

The question is: at what stage of development should the status of a child be accorded to an embryo of the human species? Different people and religions answer this question in different ways.

Fertilised eggs and embryos lack any capacity for personhood by any standard of neurological functioning. They cannot laugh or cry, feel frustration or satisfaction, let alone learn or make mistakes. In short, they are nothing like babies. To declare them as such is to devalue the personhood of actual children. When no distinction is made between babies and embryos, we lose sight of the basic endowment of physical and mental capacities that a child possesses.

I don’t condemn anyone for being opposed to abortion. That is their religious view and I respect it. The problem is that these people want to impose their morality on others and, what’s more, want to do so in a country that does not have abortion and, clearly, has no intention of introducing it. They regard as offensive any opposing view and cannot tolerate any opinion that differs from their own. It is this intolerance that so many people find objectionable.

Believers of any faith should not think that they alone can define a nation’s morality. In this case, they want specifically to impose their morality on women by telling them what they can and cannot do with their bodies.

The successful victory on the morning-after pill by the Women’s Rights Foundation marked a long over-due milestone for women in Malta. They rightly took a stand and demanded more control over their reproductive health. Ensuring women’s health and life choices enables them to play a more important role in shaping Maltese society for the better.

It is time for Malta’s patriarchal society to stand back and take notice.

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