The absolute nonsense that Mark Azzopardi manages to dream up on the matter of personhood is incredible. He uses an old and completely failed utilitarian argument that a child in the womb is not a person based upon his conclusion that the baby still depends on its mother to survive. He claims (February 15) that: "The case of the unborn child is markedly different. In this situation, the viability of the foetus is directly dependent on the pregnant woman, not on society."

The arguments for abortion based on viability or usefulness are extremely disturbing. Where is the ethical logic that proves that a child is only a person if born and dependent on society? By what account should the child lose its human nature just because it is in the womb? This point remains valid whether one does or does not believe a child has a soul.

If anything, commonsense would indicate that a defenseless baby in the womb deserves more care, rights and respect and never less. These arguments are the very same arguments that where successfully employed in the US, permitting partial birth abortion for a long while. Carried out as late as 35 or 40 weeks gestation, this technique involves allowing only the head of the baby to be partially delivered, whilst the rest of the body would be left in the birth canal.

The abortionist would then pierce the child's head with a scissor like instrument and vacuums its brains out of the skull. The dignity of personhood in this scenario is degraded to the length of the mother's birth canal. Interestingly, a child that is accidentally born in this procedure, that is, comes clean out of the birth canal before the abortionist has a chance to pierce its skull cannot then be "killed" as it mysteriously becomes a person under the law.

We are human by nature and not by function. We are human from conception and not from birth. We are human until our death and this does not change if we are unable to function.

Mr Azzopardi rants on about the rights of the pregnant women. If he really cared about them he would seriously consider this. Abortion is a lie that preys upon the panic and the anxiety of a woman who finds herself in a situation of being pregnant without planning. It capitalises on her fears and offers her the illusion of an "opt-out clause" as a quick fix solution, packaged as a woman's right of choice over a so-called non-person.

Naturally, this service is of course available at a premium. Abortion then turns out to be the beginning of a life of loneliness and endless pain for the second victim. Not surprisingly, the father in most cases is nowhere to be seen. Unlike Mr Azzopardi, we know all these things because we actually are in touch with women in this state and did not research it somewhere on the internet. This is the truth of the global abortion trade that turns over countless millions of blood dollars in profits annually.

Abortion defenders are prepared to use all manner of deceitful "givens" to market their product in an attempt to destroy the competition. They will use semantics and call a baby just a foetus and refer to killing as simple termination to water down the reality. They will declare "givens" based on conclusions that the child is not a person, not formed or that it cannot feel, see, hear or think as they attempt to "close the sale" with the familiar "women's right" diversionary tactic.