I've written it before and, for the record, I'll write it again: I am against abortion.

That having been said, in one line and clearly, I do wish the Right to Life people or whatever they're called would shut up about entrenching the rights of the unborn child (an oxymoronic statement if ever there was one) in the Constitution.

To start with, even my untutored eye can see that there is significant debate about when you cease being oxymoronic in referring to a fertilized egg as an unborn child. A child is born, so before he or she is born, he or she is not a child.

I'm not about to enter into the philosophical debate, as I am singularly unqualified to do so, but I would just point out that people with larger brains than mine have danced on this particular pin-head for long enough to show that the debate is relevant.

Certainty under the law, when you're talking about a fundamental right entrenched in the Constitution, requires an unequivocal definition of when "life" starts. If you can't have one, you can't have the other, however many peculiar statues are erected and plastic objects distributed.

And then there's the question of redundancy. The right to life is already entrenched in the Constitution, although you could probably argue that saying that human beings have the right to "be" is a statement of the bleedin' obvious of cosmic proportions. Abortion is already a criminal act, as defined in the relevant sections of the Criminal Code. Religions of most stripes classify abortion as a sin, whatever the words they use are (comparative "-ologies" was never a subject that interested me) and if you put all this together, you can't help but come to the conclusion that the sanctions, moral and legal, against abortion are already pretty tough.

As in the divorce debate, in which I am firmly in the "yes, let's have it camp", the fact that something is legal doesn't mean it's mandatory - if you think divorce is wrong, no-one's forcing you to get one. Before anyone rushes in to say that divorce is between consenting adults while abortion is performed on an unconsenting being,

I acknowledge that and point to my first line. Against my point that the Constitution doesn't need monkeying around with in this regard, Pro-lifers will argue that the fact that people still procure abortions is proof that more anti-abortion legislation is needed and, anyway, we need to guard against the possibility that abortion will be legalised in Malta. With all due respect, this is clap-trap.

People will still procure abortions, whether or not the Constitution is tampered with to include a platitude and whether or not it is legalised. Women still abort, younger women are still made to abort. This, incidentally, is why I talk about "people" procuring abortions, not just women - and I'd rather not get into the question of the rights of women over their bodies, since strident arguments in this context always make me edgy. Fine, women have rights, but so do babies. Getting back to the clap-trap, entrenching anti-abortion legislation is just that.

Does anyone seriously believe that in the foreseeable future, leaving aside vote-grubbing comments from politicians seeking to get a promise of nomination from every corner of the land, the current level of legal prohibition of abortion is going to be diminished?

The big bad EU is the only international institution that can try, with the emphasis on try, to legislate for us, the Council of Europe being more hot air than anything else, and, come on, is this really going to happen? If it does, even I'd consider sticking two fingers up at them and promoting the idea that in matters of national morality, for lack of a better phrase, the members have autonomy, but the question is hardly likely to arise. There's a liberal part of me, too, which believes that consideration should be given to de-criminalising abortion.

I'm not a student of the Bible, by any stretch of the imagination, but I rather like the admonition attributed to Jesus about not rushing to judgment and refraining from chucking rocks. Put differently, "there but for the grace of God" is a phrase with which many people who just love to haul themselves up to the moral high ground would do well to preface their thoughts, consequently modifying their judicious pronouncements. Why don't the Pro-lifers, or the Pro-entrenchers, dedicate their considerable resources in making pains of themselves to promoting the idea that taking foetuses to term is not the end of the world?

Badgering politicians, and the rest of us, with strident demands to do something that is simply not needed will very likely not stop many abortions.