Life Network welcomes Ingram Bondin’s newly-revealed interest in issues relating to the defence of human life and would like to address the concern he raised in his letter of December 19.

As a matter of clarification, it was not Gift of Life that organised the rally on December 3 but Life Network (Malta). While sharing the same ideals, the two remain separate organisations.

More to the point, however, Bondin expressed disapproval at the presence, at the rally, of an individual who espouses principles to which he, Bondin, is opposed. The fact of the matter, however, is that when an open invitation is issued to the public there can be no possibility of applying a filter to all who choose to attend in their own names as individual citizens. One cannot create a questionnaire for all prospective participants to complete beforehand in which their views on other issues, however contentious or even objectionable, are subjected to analysis on the basis of which their ‘eligibility’ to participate is decided.

It also, obviously, follows that the organisers of any such event do not automatically endorse the range of views held by all individuals who turn up on the day. To attempt otherwise would undermine the universal nature of the appeal, to say nothing of it being an absurd and impossible exercise in the first place.

Life Network is committed to the defence of life, all life, the lives of all individuals without exception, from conception to natural death, and appeals to all like-minded people to join them in the struggle against the tide of anti-life sentiment that is sweeping across this country.