Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando claims (March 28) that there is no link between divorce and abortion. Unlike Dr Pullicino Orlando, my opinion on this matter is based upon direct experience. Wherever I have travelled, to countries that have legalised divorce and abortion, those working to reverse pro-abortion laws all identify that pivotal moment in their history when they irrevocably weakened the family by legalising divorce.
They recognise that important event as being the beginning of the downward trend that led to legalised abortion and in some cases euthanasia. They are absolutely united in this view. One exception to this is Ireland, the reason being that Ireland has a constitutional amendment that affords the unborn child the right to life from conception.
A similar amendment for Malta has thus far been ignored by the Leader of the Opposition, thus leaving the door wide open to any MP in the future to present yet another Private Member’s Bill this time, however, to legalise abortion. It does not take much to envisage a similar series of events reoccurring in the future.
The link between the divorce way of thinking and abortion is there for all who bother to look; it remains an inconvenient link for some but it is there.
It is disconcerting to hear the arguments being tabled in support of divorce. They include: allowing for choice; being personally against divorce but unwilling to prevent access to divorce for minorities; that divorce is a right; divorce is available abroad so we should legalise it here; that this kind of divorce is responsible and that legalising divorce will somehow make us all the more European.
These are all the very same arguments that the pro-abortion movement continues to use in its relentless assault on the unborn child. We have heard a variety of these from people like Rebecca Gomperts from the abortion ship, from Emmy Bezzina and John Zammit, the very man who brought Dr Gomperts to Malta to campaign for abortion. He is now campaigning for a yes vote with his red and blue referendum campaign bags. One can even read these very same arguments from those who support abortion and who have commented on timesofmalta.com.
Dr Pullicino Orlando states that he is pro-marriage. Similarly, the previous Democrat speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi claimed to be pro-women and pro-family by being pro choice for abortion. She went to pains to remind everyone that she was also a good Catholic who hailed from the city that was named after St Francis, San Francisco.
Should the pro-abortion side in Malta, as they have been trying to do, ever manage to convince people that human life does not begin at fertilisation, they will then move on to perpetrate a barrage of the very same battle-tested arguments used by the divorce lobby today.
They will attempt to convince as many of us as possible that to vote for abortion in exceptional situations is anything but wrong as there is no life at stake.
They will attempt to convince us that to support a form of limited abortion is responsible as it meets the needs of a minority in a plural society.
This is all problematic information that the pro-divorce lobby would rather I did not point out. Having met Dr Pullicino Orlando, I am quite certain that he is pro-life. I fear, however, that he has invested so much into the success of his personal campaign that he is unable to be objective. His intentions may truly be to stop at divorce but he needs to call to mind the resolve and great determination as well as the superior networking skills of those very people he battled and lost against in the Council of Europe three years ago, when the resolution passed against Malta and in favour of abortion.