Octogenarian and pro-abortion Martin Scicluna (March 8) rowed again into his usual rhetoric on abortion and women’s rights in Malta. In a perfectly identical fashion as other pro-abortion activists, Scicluna wrote about women’s rights but said nothing about the deliberate killing of unborn children by women through abortion.

He euphemistically called abortion a “choice”. A “choice” to kill an unborn child. He also mentioned the “freedom of conscience” of women to kill a little human being.  As if he were writing about the right of women to a facial or to cosmetic plastic surgery.

He showed no compunction at all about the deliberate killing of innocent and vulnerable unborn children in their mothers’ wombs. It’s not ignorance of scientific facts. It’s arrogance without bounds.

Scicluna seems to be happy and confident that “women who do not want to give birth will invariably find some way of making sure they do not”. He was referring to the availability of doing abortions overseas, in Britain and Italy. He called it “abortion tourism” no less.

Apparently he has not noticed or read what a good number of anti-abortionists from the pro-life movement and the three main political parties said about the beauty of life and the horrors of abortion during the last Pro-Life Day manifestation in favour of life by MUCM at the Oratory of St John’s Cathedral in Valletta. All of them were below 60 years of age, many of them young, or relatively young.

Unlike Scicluna who seems to be happy there is sufficient and adequate provision of abortion services for the “70 to 100 women” from Malta, each year, who want to do an abortion overseas, many members of parliament on both sides of the House  speak repeatedly on the need to provide more counselling and material services for pregnant women in difficulties.

Godfrey Farrugia, former minister of health, now the government’s whip and not “an elderly male” said: “Life is beautiful. Life is a fundamental right. I started my life as an embryo. To be pro-life means that you are also in favour of the dignity of the human person throughout his whole life, from conception to natural death.

“Embryo freezing can kill and can lead to other social problems. Emergency contraception before implantation of an embryo can kill a human person. To be pro-choice does not give any woman the right to determine the fate of another weak and vulnerable human being  in the womb. In my view this holds good also in the case of rape and disability.”

On the same day Clyde Puli, shadow minister and not “an elderly male” during the same event said: “It is my pleasure to be with you for the celebration in favour of life from conception to its natural death.

“Our law reflects the high value we give to human life. The Act on the Protection of the Embryo, passed unanimously in Parliament in 2012, is the law about the right to life of the unborn child. The leader of my party Simon Busuttil has instructed me to assure everybody that the protection of life from conception until its natural death was, and will remain, on the agenda of the Nationalist Party.”

Life is beautiful. Life is a fundamental right. I started my life as an embryo 

Simon Galea from Alternattiva Demokratika, also not “an elderly male”, said:  “AD has been in favour of life and against abortion since it was set up.  While recognising the difficulties which pregnant women normally find themselves in, the right to life of the unborn child comes first.”

Deborah Schembri, a junior minister and not “a post-menopausal female”, in her speech on Pro-Life Day in Valletta said: “The child in the womb, a human life from conception, has the right to life. There are those who argue that a woman should have the right to do what she likes with her body and that the right to choose whether to keep the baby or not is a decision she only has to make. Those who argue this way conveniently forget that there are two human lives, with equal rights, in every pregnancy, wanted or not.”

On Pro-Life Day in 2015 Paula Mifsud Bonnici, shadow minister, and not “a post-menopausal female”, said: “I believe in the dignity of the human person. It is my privilege to declare that I and the Opposition are in favour of life in all its stages even when it is most fragile and cannot defend itself. I feel proud that our country still values human  life from conception, a value which many other countries have lost.”

Justyne Caruana, junior minister, and not “a post-menopausal female” on Pro-Life Day in 2009 said: “My presence here is to testify that the Labour Party is in favour of life from conception until its natural death. When we hear the pro-choice people say there is nothing wrong in women having the right to choose, actually they are saying they are in favour of abortion. I believe the right to life from conception is a fundamental right. Not only, but pregnant mothers  have the duty, and the obligation, to do what it takes to protect the life of the child in their womb, until birth.”

Government backbencher Deo Debattisita (not “an elderly male”) has urged the government to set up a “pro-life” clinic to help expectant mothers thinking of aborting their unborn children.

In 2013, Carmelo Abela, now Minister of the Interior, and not “an elderly male”, said: “Abortion is illegal and that is how it should remain – it is nothing less than murder.” And he added: “Parents were obliged to do their utmost and protect their offspring from the moment of conception… Society and the State were in duty bound to support mothers during their pregnancies and help them provide a good quality of life to their newborns”.

The Pro-Life Movement has been offering the service HOPE to pregnant women in difficulties for many years and there are plans to enhance these services even further in the coming months.

So much for Scicluna’s obscure perception of “moral paranoia, tilting with windmills and obsessional compulsive disorder of Maltese anti-abortionists”.

Scicluna’s article contrasts sharply with the 2015 report by the Today Public Policy Institute, of which he was director general, on “the environmental dimension of Malta’s ill-health and action to prevent obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease and dementia”.

It is claimed the report is focused on “environmental factors that encourage incorporating healthy lifestyles into everyday life”. Yet Scicluna utterly disregards the right to all the good conditions for a healthy life in the womb, the first environment to man, for the 4,000 and more unborn children every year in Malta.

Unlike many articles which Scicluna writes in this newspaper, and which I read and admire, every time he writes on abortion and women’s rights he discredits himself.

In her article ‘Be bold(er) for change’ (March 8) Equalities Minister Helena Dalli writing on the occasion of Women’s Day draws a broad outline of what she intends to do to advance further the cause of women in Malta. Yet she makes no reference to sexual and reproductive health, in international circles synonymous with abortion, as other pro-abortion women are doing in Malta. Has there been a ‘change’ here also?  A change of heart after the controversy on the morning-after pill?

Paragraph 25 of the report of the Working Group on the Universal Periodic Review on Malta at the UN in Geneva (December 2013) says that Dalli led a Maltese delegation of 11 persons which “reiterated the (Malta) government’s belief in the need to protect the right to life, including that of the unborn child. It expressed the view that, as human life begins at conception, the termination of pregnancy through procedures of induced abortion at any stage of gestation, was an infringement of this right. Malta, therefore, could not recognise abortion or any other form of termination of pregnancy as a legitimate measure of family planning”.

Tony Mifsud, coordinator, Malta Unborn Child Movement.