On October 14, The Sunday Times of Malta reported: “As abortion debate (in Malta) opens up, theatre reflects and responds.” This because the issue is for the first time set to hit the theatre, with a script by a Maltese author depicting the real experiences of Maltese people from both sides of the debate.
Mario Cacciottolo wrote (October 19 ) also on BBC News: “Malta sets stage for abortion debate.”
The debate, if any, should not be on abortion, because that is killing another human being, but on alternatives to abortion considering how so many people, nonetheless, have resorted to remedy the very big problem of unwanted pregnancies in that very callous and atrocious way.
In the same BBC report Klaus Vella Bardon, deputy chairman of LifeNetwork Foundation Malta argues that “Malta should not even debate the issue, because that would be “a step towards making it socially acceptable”.
Then he continues: “As a society we’re against the death penalty, even for those who commit gratuitous murders, but why do we then accept killing a child?” I agree with Vella Bardon on both counts.
The irony is that somebody decided to open up a debate on abortion when Malta had, long ago, abolished the death penalty for humans. And there is only one definition of abortion - the deliberate killing of a very little unborn human being.
The death penalty on humans was usually given because they had, knowingly and deliberately, killed another human being, which in a civilised country like Malta, and elsewhere, is not acceptable because it goes against the inherent sanctity and dignity of all human beings.
Yet people like Lara Dimitrijevic of the Malta Women’s Rights Foundation, not really Malta, has now started campaigning to introduce abortion because, otherwise, she said it before, we continue to be unlike other countries in the world. She makes it sound like, because abortion is now so fashionable... well, like tattooing. She trivialises the issue.
She also said: “Abortion is not something which is not happening in this country. When it happens the woman who for whatever reason has chosen to end a pregnancy has to continue living with the stigma and that is unjust.”
This is also why we have to debate, not abortion, but alternatives to abortion because for the cases described by Dimitrijevic we have also to think how to help the mother who is contemplating abortion not by legislating to introduce abortion, as it is very clear Dimitrijevic is suggesting, but by investing in human, material and financial resources in education, medical care and sanitary services, together with adoption, fostering, counselling and other compassionate services.
In fact MUCM, with other organisations in the Pro-Life Movement, have just suggested to the Minister of Finance in a pre-budget 2019 document that the government should invest in the further expansion of existing government services to pregnant adoloscent and adult women, like Aġenzija Għożża of the Education Department and Parent Craft and Aġenzija Benniena of the Health Department. For the same purpose the government should also grant financial, material and other assistance to similar agencies of organisations in the Pro-Life Movement, like HOPE of the Gift of Life Foundation, FEMM of the Malta Life Network and Dar Guzeppa Debono of the Church in Gozo.
Dimitrijevic seems to be emerging as a very good champion of the rights of abused and battered women in cases of domestic violence while at the same time, unfortunately, she seems to be building a reputation for herself as an advocate of domestic violence against unborn children.
But when a woman seeks abortion as a remedy to an unwanted pregnancy she is seeking to solve her problem at the expense of another human being
Abortions are usually mostly sought, and done, after women opt to have sexual intercourse with men with no immediate thought of the consequences.
Had it been like alcohol consumption, binge drinking, tobacco smoking or drugs taking, all of which give high doses of pleasure and satisfaction, the unpleasurable consequences of all these practices would have been suffered only by the individual consumer, any man or woman.
But when a woman seeks abortion as a remedy to an unwanted pregnancy she is seeking to solve her problem at the expense of another human being. She can never assert to herself to do that as a right because that can never be a right at all in any civilised country. Lawmakers, anywhere, invariably sanction abortion for their own self-preservation.
For rape victims adoption, not abortion, can always be the solution for a woman with an unwanted pregnancy.
Any woman knows, by now, how many childless couples in Malta are always willing and happy to adopt babies, and small children, who cannot be brought up by their natural parents.
Lately, the Maltese government very rightly started subsidising would-be adoptive parents by giving them €10,000 to cover all expenses connected with an adoption of a child from abroad. Obviously, adopting Maltese children, and unwanted children when born, is much cheaper.
During the 2012 US Republican Party convention in Tampa, the Platform Committee struggled with an aspect of the argument against legal abortion. Just about everyone on the committee agreed that abortion should be banned. But committee members were split over whether official party doctrine should include exceptions to the abortion ban if a fetus was the result of rape or incest. In the end, the official Republican platform stated: “We assert the inherent dignity and sanctity of all human life and affirm that the unborn child has a fundamental individual right to life which cannot be infringed.” No exceptions. Even in cases of first-degree relative incest.
When a country goes to war it knows that during combat many of its soldiers will die and many others will be wounded and maimed. We never heard that any particular country had given orders to its generals on the battlefield to shoot and kill all its wounded soldiers because, thereafter, these will be a big burden, of any sort, on the human and other resources of that country.
On the contrary, all countries provide medical and nursing services first on the battlefield itself and afterwards, primarily, in provisional hospitals as near as possible to the battlefield. Later on they are transferred to fully equipped hospitals, first on nearby allied land, and later on its mainland. Because that’s what wounded soldiers deserve.
Science has shown that unborn children in the wombs of mothers who are contemplating abortion feel that they are being rejected and feel the pain.
There is no difference between a pregnant woman in distress, an unwanted unborn child and a wounded soldier. All are human beings deserving respect, protection, and healing and the opportunity to live, develop and flourish.
Tony Mifsud, coordinator, Malta Unborn Child Movement.
This is a Times of Malta print opinion piece