Category: Malta

Mother Teresa said: “Once living love is destroyed by contraception, abortion follows very easily.” Will this be the case in Malta? What is the evidence that contraception encourages abortion? The figures are strongly suggestive.

In the US, oral contraceptive use started in the early 1960s and reached a plateau of about 10 million users by the early 1970s. Abortion started to increase about 10 years after the introduction of ‘the pill’ in 1970, and reached a peak of 25 per cent of births about 10 years later. The steep increase of abortion mirrors the rapid uptake of oral contraceptives 10 years earlier.

While this does not prove a causal connection, the link is very plausible for several reasons: the contraceptive culture encourages sex outside of marriage; contracepted sex is presumed to be protected from pregnancy; unanticipated pregnancy often causes a person to resort to abortion; and abortion has become a method of contraception, with 37 per cent of abortions in the UK in 2012 being repeats, 4,500 women having at least four and 33 women terminating nine or more pregnancies.

Abortion is not just a women’s issue. It is a major, lucrative industry, as well as a huge social and political issue, and both women and men are involved. What is difficult to understand, however, is how entrenched those who are pro-abortion are in denying the rights, life, individuality and personhood of the unborn child.

This is despite clear, overwhelming scientific demonstration that a zygote has a full adult DNA complement at conception.

With the pill, we were able for the first time to regularly and reliably separate the unitive and procreative aspects of sex. On one hand this means being able to control when life is conceived. On the other, it potentially turns the marital act of starting or increasing a family into a new, risk-of-pregnancy-free, genital, recreative pastime.

These two changes together must have a huge effect on the human pysche. This likely includes effects on self-perception of our power over life, effects on how free people feel they are to choose what they desire (autonomy) and on the very meaning of sex and procreation.

John Paul II stated that the danger with contraception is that it puts personal fulfilment at the centre of life’s meaning and fosters a self-centredness divorced from truth. Neurobiological research into the effects of the pill is in its infancy, but several worrying effects have been found, including, somewhat predictably, changes in reward processing by the brain. (Reward is the motivational property of a stimulus that induces pleasure.)

St Augustine believed lust has a strong subconscious power to undermine the direction of our wills. He used the image of a rider on a horse to explain how conscience steers our free will. At the base of the will is an innate drive to love and justice. A second level of the will then selects specific desires, as goals to pursue. A rational third level of the will identifies different courses of action to achieve its goal.

Finally conscience judges whether the chosen act should proceed (the free-will component) and an action is carried out. If a significant section of society accepts even subconsciously that recreational sex without procreation is a new, desirable goal, this will very likely tip the balance of the will. The ‘horse’ thinks it is riding straight but in fact it will be turning off course.

Conscience is also multilayered. At the base of conscience are moral values common to all humans. Any specific moral code that has been taught (as in a religion) is superimposed at a second level. Then at a third level are the norms of at any particular time or society (which are changeable).

Conscience is therefore going to be affected in a major way if what used to be morally wrong is now accepted. This will particularly affect those who have never been taught a clear moral code or have been brought up in the contraceptive age.

So with habitual contraception, the rider is not controlling the horse properly, and anyway, the horse is veering off without the person knowing. Although this is a simplistic analogy, it explains how a goal of the will might subconsciously be switched to sexual enjoyment rather than to welcoming the life of the child that comes with sex.

It would not be a large step to see an unborn child as unimportant and as a barrier to our desires or will. Contraceptives are therefore likely very powerful manipulators of how we act as a society and how free we feel to choose – and not simply a method of preventing a pregnancy. They may be turning our wills against the vulnerable unborn without us knowing it.

Women’s groups in the US are beginning to realise how insidious their effects are and are voluntarily discontinuing them (quite independent of any religious teaching on the issue).

In Malta we have the advantage of fifty years’ research and knowledge on the pill, and we should not ignore its insidious, potentially devastating side effects.

Patrick Pullicino is a neurologist studying for the priesthood.

On November 22, this newspaper’s sister publication published a very brave and commendable editorial which hit several nails right on the head. It was correctly pointed out that the term ‘reproductive rights’ is nothing but camouflage for abortion.

The correctness of this statement has been proved the world over. The vagueness of the term serves to enable it to include under its umbrella not only contraception, abortion and late-term or partial-birth abortion, but also any other pretended right that may be claimed as such in future. It is no secret that everywhere the term has been used, it has been used to bring about the spectre of abortion.

Needless to say, an editorial with such foresight is sure to attract naysaying and senseless hand-wringing from those who wish to take Malta back to the dark ages of mediaeval butchery and child sacrifice.

Abortion is an amalgam of every social ill. It is sexism, racism, ableism and classism all rolled into one. Abortion is sexist when in so many places around the world, millions of girls are aborted for the simple fact that they are girls (gendercide). Abortion is racist when, in New York City and in other places, an inordinate proportion of abortions are carried out on black women, and hence, black babies. Abortion discriminates against disabled people when it takes place for the sole reason that the baby would have been diagnosed with some disability or malady in utero. Abortion is classist when it is marketed to the less well-off who are persuaded that their situation is too desperate and too dire to afford a child.

Why are pro-social justice left-wingers not up in arms about this? Why are all those who decry inequality between men and women not shouting and protesting the tragedy of gendercide in the streets? Where is the social justice in killing another person?

It sometimes happens that men are attacked for opposing abortion because they are men. This is clearly ridiculous. Must one be personally affected in order to voice oneself? Of course not! Opposition to abortion is rooted in deep love and respect for all human life.

If the mother seeking an abortion is doing so out of adverse conditions, why not help that woman instead? If she is in poverty, why not utilise existing social ser­vices and create new ones to support her? If she is a victim of rape or of domestic violence, why not ensure that mother and child are safe and well-cared for in a secure environment? If she is herself ill, why not provide the necessary treatment and medi­cation, provided one applies the double-effect principle properly, and provided one tries to save the mother as well as the child? 

Fundamentally, are any of the above the child’s fault? If not, then why kill the child to solve the problem?

The same reasoning can apply to when the alleged non-viability of the child is raised as an exception to the child’s right to life. Irrespective of the illness, condition or circumstance that the child may suffer from, no one can possibly claim the autho­rity to kill that child due to such illness, condition or circumstance that may make the child non-viable. Furthermore, advances in medicine have made it possible for babies to be born far earlier than normal.

Abortion advocates in Malta claim that rape, incest and danger to the mother’s life should be exceptions to the right to life. This contrasts with other places in the world where the ‘Shout your abortion’ movement has sprung up. This movement seeks to remove all stigma from abortion by encouraging women who have had abortions to proudly announce that they had one or more abortions in the past, for whatever reason.

Although the current abortion advocates in Malta would not admit this, there will come a time when those who are currently pushing for abortion will themselves be considered antiquated and conservative when the even more repugnant ‘abortion on demand and without apology’ band comes in.

Clearly, current abortion advocates are labouring under the delusion that if introduced, abortion will be ‘safe, legal and rare’. However, statistics in other countries show that following legalisation, abortion rates skyrocketed. Legalisation of something is never meant to make it rare. Neither is legalisation a guarantee of safety, and more so when the law ends up permitting the killing of a child.

Do we really know how abortion takes place? We suspect most people either do not know or do not wish to know. Abortion is not some clean, simple and easy medical procedure. Oftentimes it involves active butchery in which the baby is quite simply torn apart limb from limb.

If it takes place earlier in the pregnancy, a heart-stopping potassium injection to the baby’s heart takes place. The mother is then told she can give birth to a dead child and get on with her life. To all those who believe that the film The Silent Scream is untruthful or propagandistic, I would pose the question: How would you depict the biological reality of an abortion?

There is lack of moral certainty about many things in life. However, as human beings endowed with reason, our lives should consist of an active search for truth in order to turn seas of murky grey into enlightening clarity. The truth is astonishingly simple and clear: every child has a right to live, irrespective of health, sex and any other consideration.

As Maltese with a rich tradition of gene­rosity and hospitality, let us not be afraid to extend a helping hand to those less fortunate. A helping hand does not kill.

Ramon Bonett Sladden and Sara Portelli are lawyers.

‘Boy, oh boy, where to begin?’ This is how Alice Taylor set the tone for her piece in The Malta Independent on Sunday (24 December), conjuring up a mental image of herself rubbing her hands together lasciviously, drooling in anticipation of all the spots she’s going to knock off her opponents. Only, this is not the prelude to a bar-room brawl but a column in one of Malta’s leading newspapers, no less.

There is little evidence that the literary standards of the local media have improved much in recent years, but if Alice Taylor’s work is anything to go by then they have deteriorated a lot more than is generally supposed. I don’t know who Alice Taylor actually is, but it is clear that, as argumentative commentary goes, she’s not the sharpest knife in the drawer. And insofar as the debate on abortion is concerned, I’d worry only if I found myself on the same side as her.

Taylor’s tactic, if indeed it even qualifies as one, seems to be that of hurling epithets at speakers and leaving it at that. Someone needs to point out to her that even the meanest of intellects can call a statement ‘rubbish’. The problem is following it up with a reason why it is so. And this is where Taylor is so clearly unable to deliver, leaving the reader with the inescapable impression that the accuser herself isn’t quite sure. Neither oratory nor argumentative style are Taylor’s strong points, but nowhere does she put her foot in it more emphatically than in her claim that to be opposed to her point of view is to be ‘unable to think critically, logically or even outside the box’. Coming from someone who has yet to demonstrate the most rudimentary familiarity with these skills, that is indeed an interesting comment.

It gets worse though. Taylor relies exclusively on a hotchpotch of outdated clichés and endlessly recycled slogans in her search for some sort of prop for her accusations. Having scraped the barrel clean on these, she takes a deep breath for her denouement: a dramatic denunciation of all opponents to her views as lacking any understanding of biology, human rights and contraception, intent only on misinformation and the fomentation of hatred. This, from someone whose combined knowledge of human embryology, as well as the Charter of Human Rights, would fit comfortably onto a small StickyNote. Heady stuff indeed!

Her gravest error, however, lies in her comments on Rebecca Kiessling’s recent visit (her second) to Malta. This seems to have irritated Ms Taylor no end. It was almost certainly something Rebecca said but it is less clear what exactly that was, because Taylor’s response was directed nearly exclusively at the allegation that Rebecca Kiessling makes her living, or at least part of it, from speaking publicly on the issue of abortion.

Quite apart from the fact that one would have expected a purported newspaper columnist to occasionally address the message, as opposed to the messenger, there is also the issue of the actual accuracy of Taylor’s allegations. The fact is that Rebecca Kiessling never received a cent for either of her two visits to Malta, staying in a host home on both occasions. Rebecca’s mission is speaking and the great bulk of it is done voluntarily.

Furthermore, she receives no payment from within her own organisation. She travels world-wide to create awareness on life choices, defending the vulnerable. She speaks about the right to life of the child born from rape. As a true femminist, she speaks about the protection of women from rapists and promotes termination of the parental rights of the rapist to protect the women after they give birth. As a lawyer, she and others have defended human embryos who, in couple separation cases, often end up losing their lives. Unlike most of Taylor’s splutterings, all this is documented and verifiable. I believe it would be a good idea at this point to draw Taylor’s attention to these details and ask her, publicly, if she wishes to stand by them, rethink them or even, perhaps, withdraw them altogether.

In the course of her uninspired meanderings, Taylor goes out of her way to express her personal glee at the anticipation of the introduction of abortion in Malta. She may well be right in this, but I would leave her with the following observation by Douglas Gwyn, nonetheless: ‘Truth is not determined by majority vote’.

Dr Miriam Sciberras BChD (Hons) MA Bioethics

Chairwoman Life Network Foundation Malta

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In his opinion piece of December 13 titled ‘Women’s Rights’, Martin Scicluna goes to great pains to try and frame the argument in favour of abortion as a matter of woman’s reproductive rights, and going so far as portraying abortion as a human right, again resting his argument erroneously on an assertion made by the supposedly Council of Europe’s Commissioner for Human Rights Nils Muiznieks, who, plainly speaking, should know better.

To hide what abortion really is, pro-abortionists camouflage the act of killing an unborn child by using misleading phrases like “sexual and reproductive rights”.

Giovanni Bonello, former judge of the European Court of Human Rights, refuted this argument through his contribution in a post under the online version of the same article when he asserted: “Martin Scicluna seems to take on board, without challenging it, what Muiznieks is reported to have claimed, viz, that abortion is human right.”

Human rights in Europe are not what Muiznieks says they are, but what the European Convention of Human Rights and the European Court of Human Rights say they are. I invite Scicluna to quote exactly where either the convention or the court have declared abortion to be a human right.

What the court said is entirely different: where the national domestic legislation of a European state allows abortion, then it is a violation by that State to hinder the effective exercise of that right. Neither the convention nor the court have ever made abortion a human right.

Scicluna presents abortion as a matter for the conscience of the woman, and trivialises the argument by stating that abortion is a matter of opinion.

Since when is killing another person a matter of opinion or conscience? When society acted in such a manner there was only one phrase that described that civilisation: barbaric.

When a woman is pregnant, science and not some morality tells us that life in the womb of a woman is fully human and distinct from the moment of fertilisation. By the time most abortions can be performed, the baby already has a beating heart, identifiable brain waves etc. As a human being, like all of us, the unborn child (which is the first stage of development) has the unalienable right to life and deserves the full protection under the law.

If killing has become a matter of conscience and opinion, then we can stop prosecuting the killers of Daphne Caruana Galizia because I am sure the killers will claim that in their opinion they did the right thing and it does not go against their conscience. Thank God that in our justice system these are not allowable arguments for acquittal.

The fact that many governments in the world have legalised the killing of the unborn does not make it any less wrong.

The ancient Romans (called civilisation) forced gladiators to fight to death, and threw slaves and Christians to the lions for entertainment. This was an allowable, lawful practice, promoted by the State but it was still wrong and barbaric.

Hitler exterminated Jews, ethnic Poles, other Slavic groups, Soviet citizens and prisoners of war, homosexuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses, black people, political opponents, the Roma and the “incurably sick”, to cleanse Germany and keep pure the Arian race.

He was then the law but what he did was still barbaric and something we still remind ourselves of every year by commemorating the victims of the Holocaust.

This year Iceland is boasting that it has eradicated Down syndrome not through some cure but through abortion, the killing of unborn children diagnosed as potentially with Down syndrome.

What makes Icelandic policymakers any different from the concept of eugenics practised by Nazi Germany to maintain the so-called purity of the Arian race. The fact that it is the government of Iceland is promoting this practice does not make Iceland any less barbaric then the Romans and Nazi Germany.

The world today is no less barbaric when millions, upon millions of unborn children are exterminated every year, in the name of reproductive rights. The National Right to Life Committee in the US reports that since 1973, following the Roe vs Wade decision, 59,115,995 human beings have been killed through abortion in the US alone, six times the number of people Hitler exterminated in gas chambers.

If Scicluna wants to make us believe that these were killed because the mothers were raped, the child endangered the life of the mother, were severely infirm and the other extremes used to create sympathy for the pro-abortion argument, then I ask Scicluna not to treat us as fools.

It is a fact that the world remains a barbaric globe. We have become cold-blooded to the horrific conditions of the Syrian innocent caught in an endless conflict trapped in political chess game, the hunger and deprivations of people in Africa and the drowning of migrants crossing the Mediterranean, the abandoned homeless in the streets of Europe, the US and in the so-cold advanced societies and the biggest plague the murder of millions of unborn children all over the world.

Humanity is barbaric, there is no other word, lost in its egoism, self-centeredness, where money, comfort and “rights” seem to be the only creed.

Contrary to Muiznieks’s opinion, Malta does not have restrictive regimes when it comes to abortion. Malta defends life, every human being, from a child’s inception to an individual’s natural death. Our country protects the life of Scicluna and the child that is yet unborn.

I wonder what Scicluna would say if people start to argue that when a person reaches the age of 80 the family members or the State should have the right to put such elderly life to death because as an elderly he is less human, he is less independent, and has become a financial burden.  When we play with life these bizarre arguments become reality.

Tonio Fenech is a former Nationalist Party minister.

In his usual dogmatic style, Martin Scicluna in his article of  December 13, ‘Women’s Rights’, seeks to make a case for abortion in Malta by affirming that the country has a problem and because most countries in the world have abortion while we don’t.

He also dangerously asserts that abortion is a matter of a woman’s personal conscience. Is it? Unfortunately, these assertions require some detailed explanations, and therefore I will tackle the points raised.

Does Malta have a problem because we do not have abortion in our laws?

Scicluna claims that abortion is justified because he claims that “scores of women were going abroad every year to terminate their pregnancies”.  I have not seen a statistic to prove this claim however he is comfortable to anchor his argument on mere hearsay.

I will not deny the fact that some Maltese women have made abortions.  I am also aware that women that have gone through an abortion have done so with a lot of grief, pain and psychological turmoil, many suffering regret, guilt and more serious complications such as depression.

The inherent nature of a woman is to bear and give life and not to destroy it.

Scicluna in making his arguments shut out completely the fact that we are talking about the killing of innocent lives, of unborn children.  This is indeed appalling.

It is an observable scientific fact that life begins in the womb.  Our society has long upheld the value that human life is intrinsically precious, and not of lesser or greater value depending on the stage of development of the human being.  When we talk of rights we also need to talk of obligations including the protection of the unborn children as those before us have protected us when we too were a foetus.

People who work with women contemplating abortion tell you how many times the mother does not even know what she would have to go through when making the decision, including the emotional and psychological trauma they will inevitably pass through, and the guilt and remorse that they subsequently will suffer.

What these vulnerable, many times very young mothers need is love, support and help to deal with an unplanned pregnancy.  They need guidance on the positive options, on the State support if they opt to retain the child or if unable to do so themselves the option of fostering and adoption.

We need to convince these mothers (and immediate family) that there is no stigma in having a child outside of marriage, that they will be supported to allow the young women to continue pursuing her education and have a career.

Termination of the innocent child should never be an option let alone presented as a solution. If ultimately the mother does not want or is unable to take care of the child, then she should be encouraged to lovingly offer that child to a caring family that desire to have children of their own but cannot, through adoption. 

The real problem is when young girls are pushed into abortion by their own family who feel unprepared to carry the burden of an unplanned child. They opt for abortion because once born they feel unable to give away ‘their’ child to others and so find it easier to get rid (kill) a child they yet have not seen.

If truly we have so many women seeking abortion, then the government should embark in a massive outreach programme to encourage these women to seek support, including considering adoption.

How beautiful and human it would be if a couple earmarked to adopt the child, is allowed to accompany the mother, support her and give her the comfort that they will give the child the love she unfortunately is unable to give because of her circumstances.

This is a noble act of the mother and I am certain that the adoptive parents will bring up the child thankful that his/her natural mother still gave them life despite her difficulties.

How ironic, that in the same time that we have advocates urging us to destroy innocent babies, we have advocates who tell us that we need to unwind the Embryo Protection Act to introduce new concepts like sperm and egg donation, even surrogacy to ‘create’ babies for couples who are unable to have children.  Is this at all logical and humane?

We kill the ‘natural’ unborn babies and create ‘artificial’ ones.

I understand that there are those who have huge commercial interests in having abortion clinics and IVF centres, but are these commercial interests supreme over the life of the unborn child to be aborted and the rights of the parentless children they seek to create?

Adoption should be the solution for unwanted pregnancies and childless couples and not abortion, sperm and egg donations and surrogacy.

Catching on are the catch phrases to justify abortion by the supposedly the Council of Europe’s Commissioner for Human Rights Nils Muiznieks, who seems to forget the rights of the unborn.

Adoption and not abortion “gives women a healthy living, the right to bodily integrity, a women’s right to private life and to be free of ill-treatment” when the child is unwanted.

Abortion only causes pain, anxiety, trauma, guilt, regret and death.

The answer to an unwanted child is not abortion but adoption, life not death. Advocating abortion is putting a wedge between the mother and her own child within her womb, this is shameful and the problem. There is no shame or problem in Malta remaining a beacon for life and protecting the unborn.

Of course, and with good reason:  the children of Malta are being targeted. The purposefully misnamed Women’s Rights Foundation (WRF) is taking aim at Maltese children in the womb, lying in wait for the opportunity to use lethal weapons against them. But not merely lying in wait – they are also conspiring against Malta’s greatest natural resource: its children.

They devise schemes to commit violence within the bodies of pregnant women – in the name of ‘women’s rights’, yet could not be more hypocritical.

Dimitrijevic and Dibben of WRF want access to Maltese children in schools in order to “start a discussion” of their end goals, and in their recent article chide: “What are you afraid of?”

They want to promote a scheme of genocide to schoolchildren and have the audacity to ask such a question – like the Big Bad Wolf posing the same inquiry to Little Red Riding Hood.

There is much to fear…

Today, Malta is a nation which is morally superior because violence is not employed as a solution. Instead, Malta responds with real healthcare that heals, not kills, and doctors can maintain a respectable profession which honors their Hippocratic oath to do no harm.

In a civilised society, killing is not a morally acceptable solution to suffering. But abortion advocates couch their deadly plan in terms of “reproductive rights”, “difficult decisions” and “treatment proscribed” as a means of ending suffering.

If you are pregnant, then you’ve already reproduced, and the premeditated slaughter of another living human being is not “treatment”. Josef Mengele, who experimented on Jewish children as “treatment”, would be proud to hear such language employed – just as in Iceland, where they recently celebrated having nearly “eradicated” Down’s syndrome. Eradicated? It’s the same terminology the Nazis used.

A culture of death begins with deceit – with phraseology that indeed camouflages itself, initially hiding the true agenda. And then before you know it, you have large segments of generations missing because you turned your land into a killing field of your own flesh and blood, with easy slaughter of the most vulnerable and most innocent.

The same article from WRF also emphasised the lack of rape and incest exceptions in Maltese law. I was conceived in rape. My birth mother tried to kill me at two illegal abortion clinics and made it clear she would have succeeded in aborting me if it had been legal.

I owe my birth to the law which protected me, just as the women and children of Malta are protected today. And now, my birth mother is thankful we were both spared from the horror of abortion.

I did not deserve the death penalty for the crimes of my biological father. I don’t see WRF advocating for the death penalty for rapists, only the innocent child. It is barbaric to punish a baby for the crimes of another. Rapists, child molesters and sex traffickers love abortion. It protects and enables them to continue their exploitation.

WRF claim they care for their own gender, yet I’m a woman and they wish me dead. I don’t feel the love.

Furthermore, abortion is being proposed in the name of women’s rights, but worldwide, women are losing their voices because it is primarily females who are being slaughtered.

Watch the film The Three Deadliest Words in the World: It’s a Girl (www.itsagirlmovie.com). The massive gendercide we are witnessing throughout Asia, spreading into much of the rest of the world, has led to an increase in sex trafficking, abduction of little girls, a decrease in education of females and the underrepresentation of women in the public sphere.

Women are coerced not only into aborting but are “choosing” to abort their daughters, bringing suffering to their own gender.

But WRF suggests we pro-lifers are the ones blind to the plight of women. To be pro-woman is to be pro-life.

Please, I urge the good people of Malta, do not allow the voices of death to win. Do not allow the blood of innocent Maltese children to be spilled on your soil.

Rebecca Kiessling is an attorney, president of the global pro-life organisation Save the 1 and co-founder of Hope After Rape Conception.

It may come as something of a revelation to Lara Dimitrijevic and Andreana Dibben (‘What are you afraid of?’, December 9) but there actually do exist moral absolutes in this world. This, despite the unstinting efforts of a growing body of individuals and organisations who, for reasons best not gone into, try their hardest to muddy the waters.

The right to life of all human beings, without exception, recognises one such. It is from this absolute moral right that the moral imperative not to kill is derived. The fact that these are moral absolutes means that no amount of legislation can render them anything other than what they are and what they will be always.

Legislation may allow a moral wrong, it may encourage a moral wrong, laud it even but all it can ever do is make wrong permissible. What it cannot do is make wrong right.

Law, at least in theory, is supposed to be based on morality, not the other way round. Today, however, we live in a world in which good and evil have been fully inverted with the imprimatur of law.

The trouble is, we know evil when we see it, even if only at an unconscious level. Controversy arises when law violates our innate sense of right and wrong and nowhere is this more evident than in the arena of abortion legislation where, instead of diminishing with the passage of time, the resistance and opposition to abortion has become more intense over the years, with no sign of slowing down.

Of course, I am but a lowly man and thus ruled out of contributing to the discussion by the illiberal liberals. Interestingly, however, whereas I have witnessed a great deal of attempted shaming of men whose sole intention was that of saving the lives of their children, I have never observed any parallel condemnation of pro-abortion men, of any age, even when many of these are caught abusing women and coercing them into having abortions – but that’s the face of tolerance for you, at least as practised by abortionists.

I therefore feel a level of entitlement to engage in this debate notwithstanding any sexist, intolerant, discriminatory claims to the contrary.

Let us be clear about two things from the start.

There exists no such thing as a human right to abortion. Throughout the gamut of shabby, nonsensical, worn out clichés and non-arguments that constitute the entire case for abortion, this one is arguably the most pervasive. It bears repeating: abortion is not a human right.

When officials from the EU, or anywhere else, refer to a right to abortion they are misinformed. Or worse.

The discussion that is being touted with such loud enthusiasm has nothing to do with women’s rights, far less with women’s health. No one is the least bit interested in discussing pre- or post-natal care, pregnancy support, PAP tests, cancer screening or breast examinations.

The umbrella phrase ‘reproductive rights’ means one thing only. It is abortion, and abortion alone, that fires the enthusiasm of the ‘reproductive rights’ brigade the world over.

This euphemism (let us refrain from calling it cynical) was dreamt up by highly paid professional advertisers several decades ago and it has been freely bandied about ever since, its sole purpose being that of providing a camouflage for the grisly reality of abortion.

There is an ugly little truth that runs like a poisonous thread throughout the entire argument and it is this – no one would be discussing abortion, anywhere, were it not such a hugely profitable business.

Women are cash machines to the abortion industry. They are unwitting victims to the purveyors of abortion worldwide.

They are victims to the men who get them pregnant in the first place, then coerce them into having an abortion.

They are victims to the promoters of abortion, who persuade them that it’s ok to kill their own children, then leave them to get on with it.

They are victims to the ghoulish practitioners of abortion, who assure them that it’s a simple procedure and that that will be the end of it.

Let us then have a discussion on abortion. But let us dispense with the reproductive rights rubbish from the outset. And next, why restrict ourselves to the one discussion alone? Why should we not have a concurrent debate on rape, while we’re at it? And another on slavery? And on human trafficking too?

Every single foul practice in the history of humanity has had its adherents and every single one of them has claimed justification for their actions at one point or another.

The history of women is a history of victimisation. The clamour for abortion is nothing more than the modern-day version of the physical, psychological and spiritual degradation of women that has characterised human society throughout time.

The 21st century, in this regard, is no better than all the others that preceded it. It saw the emergence of a hitherto unheard of dichotomy between baby and woman that has now dominated the abortion debate for decades. Women and children, of course, are not natural enemies and it was only a perversion of feminism that brought about this dichotomy in the first instance.

The fact is, pro-‘choicers’ are not defenders of women but defenders of abortion.

The difference is that today, more than ever before, there is a realisation, and an acceptance, that women have been given a raw deal throughout history. Abortion is, emphatically, not an act of empowerment but the result of abandonment, desperation and betrayal.

After all this time, are we really incapable of coming up with any better guarantee of a woman’s right to participate fully in the social and political life of society than one conditioned on surgery and the sacrificing of her children ?

Women deserve better than abortion.

Ivan Padovani is a member of Life Network (Malta).

In our categorising of human political, economic and philosophical thought we often tend to use terms such as analytical and then post-analytical thought, modern and then post-modern thought. Now I believe we have arrived at a new category of man: we have had rational man but now we are entering the new period of post-rational man!

It is becoming increasingly obvious that, initially, man started to waive the concept of God because he believed that God was restrictive to his will and freedom. Therefore man fell on the next best thing to God, which is God’s gift to man – human reason. Mankind is the only biological species that is able to be self-reflective, reasonable. We are able to overcome our instinct – even our emotions – to be ultimately a rational species. We pride ourselves on turning to science and philosophy to be able to explain what goes on in the natural world around us and what goes on in our reasonable thoughts. If man cannot explain why something happened from the divine perspective he can turn to the rational perspective. Those who, like Nietzsche, sought to declare that God is dead were able to add that they had science to carry them through! Science could give them the bedrock on which they could build their belief and their actions would ensue from the cathedrals of science.

Now, alas, this is no longer enough! Man is aspiring to go beyond the scientific, the rational. Rationality is no longer enough to appease the disquiet of the human individual. Rational thought and behaviour is no longer sufficient to show someone what the truth of a matter is. Today, you show people the scientific truth and they will just say that it is not true because, based on their ‘perceptions’, the truth lies elsewhere.

This behaviour is, I think, developing as an extension of the development of the social media, where – in an android world – it is often difficult to discern between what is true and what is a concoction of the vivid human imagination! We are losing our capacity to discern what is true and what is false. Any scientific truth one presents is not judged in the peer-reviewed scientific magazines and accepted as sufficient, but considered as ‘fake news’ on a whim and then discarded by the individual!

Nowhere is this more true than when deciding where the beginning of an individual life starts! The science responsible for determining where the beginning of an new individual human being – a member of the species Homo sapiens – is, falls on the science of anatomy, specifically the section of anatomy that deals with the inception of developing human life, in a womb or outside it, specifically termed ‘human embryology’. Now, human embryology makes it very, very clear that the first cell of the human new individual is the human zygote formed by the fusion of the human sperm cell from the father and the ovum from the mother. The academic ‘dean’ of human embryology is the publication by O’Rahilly and Mueller whose authors sit on the international Nomenclatura Embryologica.This important academic publication makes it clear that the beginning of human life begins at conception or fertilisation.

This scientific rational truth obviously presents an obstacle to those who would like to do things to a human embryo which they would not do their other biological peers. Things such as experimentation or direct removal, destruction or killing – call it what you like! This is the point at which people usually relieve themselves of their rational faculties and turn on their perceptive emotional faculties, faculties known to be wrong and often grosslywrong.

We then start to describe this scientific fact as fake news and begin to bring in categories that are nothing but the fruit of our fancies: terms such as ‘pre-embryo’ or concepts that aim at divesting the developing human being of any human faculties. We say that it does not think, we say that it is not a person, we say that it is a pre-embryo, conveniently not stating where the embryo is; we say that it is not moving, we say that it is not feeling, we say that it interferes with our freedom of choice and – the best recent one of all – is that we say categorically that it is fake news! Facts show that, once the human embryo is formed, it never stops developing through its active, self-moving potential. At eight weeks it is fully formed, and it only grows in size until term, at 40 weeks. Facts show that it develops continually, from one early cell to the several trillion cells of which the adult body is composed.

However, after rejecting divinity, man now also seeks to reject rationality, which does not surprise me at all because faith and reason are intimately linked. The rejection of God is followed by the rejection of reason, because those who sincerely seek reason can never reject God outright. They seek God through reason, in the hope that – ultimately – reason, if not revelation, will lead them to God. Now, however, objective reason is no longer being sought as we look to our emotions and perceptions to establish our foundations and, as we all know, subjective emotions vary widely, especially when we want to do what we like and the subject of discussion is a human being who cannot be seen or vote. Emotions are the new god!

This leads us into a narrow lane, because if man has rejected God – so evidently manifest and immanent in nature, and if man now rejects reason, he will eventually also find fault with his emotional god and God only knows what follows that: maybe we can revert to our animal nature so that we can then literally start to eat each other.

When man destroys God, then the nature around him, then rationality, then man is well on the road to destroying himself. It is a culture of death. The reality is that problems of our existent nature are not only physical ones but also metaphysical ones. Man cannot find the answers to his problems in pure emotions, nor ultimately in pure reason. However reason can point to a truth which lies beyond our senses as shown by the philosophers of old.

The fact remains that the first cell – or zygote – of the human species is the first founding cell of the new human being which cell has a totipotent, self-actuating potency to develop to adulthood through childhood. Tinker with this principle and you tinker with human life and innocent human life has an absolute right to our respect and to life. Those who negate this will be killing human beings in the process and will be responsible for the genocide of individual human beings, even if their emotions or intentions seek to tell them that this is ‘fake’ news.

Dr. Michael Asciak MD, M.Phil, PhD.

Senior Lecturer II in Applied Science at MCAST.

It looks like the final frontier, the last step into a pseudo-liberal world where a new vocabulary displaces reality and truth. One of the fads is ‘reproductive rights’, a term used to camouflage the much more appropriate term: abortion.

The issue raises its head again and again. Earlier this year, the Women’s Rights Foundation said it was not right that pro-life organisations were being invited to schools to teach adolescents on abortion and reproduction. They described abortion as a “complex moral issue and cannot be addressed from a black and white perspective”.

They are wrong. It is a black and white issue. It is a choice between life and death. There are no grey areas as was the case with the morning-after pill. Recently, the foundation said it had no stand on abortion but planned to be more vocal in fighting for women’s rights. Then, earlier this month, it was saying the country could not continue to bury its head in the sand and should debate abortion. It lists reproductive rights with civil rights. It is a human right that is involved ­­­– the right to life.

Equality Minister Helena Dalli was very cautious when asked on abortion. With her LGBTIQ agenda, she has waded too far out to turn back. She introduced new ‘civil rights’ by the bucketful to please the gay lobby and even redefined the institution of marriage. The debate on abortion is a ‘natural’ development to these new ‘rights’ as it is based on the same set of liberal principles that put the individual above all else. Hence, pro-abortionists speak of ‘choice’ when there should be no choice where life is involved.

The Women’s Rights Foundation calls it a dogma but belief in the basic and most fundamental right to life is not a dogma. There is no ‘choice’ either as there is no difference between one child and another. They both have an equal right to life. No one is more worthy to live than another. No one has a right to choose who is to live and who is to die, under the guise of reproductive health.

No doubt, some pregnancies can be immensely difficult and can cause enormous problems for the mother. That is where the State should come in to help, at every possible level.

The call to a debate on abortion, one most recent call coming from the new Alternattiva Demokratika chief Carmel Cacopardo, can only lead in one direction: the eventual acceptance and introduction of abortion.

Dr Dalli said none of the two main political parties had included abortion in their programme but she encourages civil debate. What does that imply? Given Labour’s track record, should the debate turn pro-abortion, there is a danger the government puts on its populist wings and jumps onto the bandwagon. Of course, there could be a political price to pay for that, which is why “debate” is being bandied around instead.

People have every right to favour abortion. But an opinion does not give them the right to murder the most innocent, as no right can ever come at the expense of someone else. No one has the right to take life, no matter what arguments can be put forward.

Sadly, it is all coming across as the final frontier.

This is a Times of Malta print editorial of the 22nd of November 2017

Ref: https://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20171122/editorial/Slow-build-up-to-the-inevitable.663739