Mothers considering an abortion should be taught how to love and helped to choose life over death, Archbishop Charles Scicluna said today.

During his homily at a Mass to mark Jum mil-Ħajja, Mgr Scicluna also urged the authorities who were responsible for the introduction of the morning after pill “to have the courage” to give potential users the “full information” about all the effects of such medicinal products.

He said that now that Malta was at the crossroads, before such a decisive decision, the decision must always be in favour of the protection of life, from very beginning to its natural end.

He quoted a speech by Saint Theresa of Calcutta in February 1994 when she described abortion as a “destroyer of peace, life and love”.

On that occasion she had said: “I feel that the greatest destroyer of peace today is abortion because it is a war against the child; a direct killing of the innocent child; murder by the mother herself. And if we accept that the mother can kill even her own child, how can we tell people not kill one another. How do you persuade a mother not to have an abortion? With love. We should be willing to love until it hurts. So the mother who is thinking of abortion should be helped to love.

“

Please do not destroy the child- Archbishop

,” Mgr Scicluna implored as he urged policy makers and the Maltese society to continue protecting life.

“We are ready to offer our support to whoever is facing these dilemmas. We need to offer our help. Women who for some reason or another do not want their child should not be ignored but should be helped through it and helped to take a decision in favour of life,” he concluded.