In his article entitled ‘United to protect children’ (August 6), Home Affairs Minister Carmelo Abela wrote: “When it comes to the well-being of our children, this is a topic that unites us all.” Yes, we are united on this.
He added: “I am part of a government which attaches great importance to protecting the best interests of children. When we hear of children being reported missing or, worse still, abducted, we are rightly alarmed. Each year in the EU, about 250,000 children are reported abducted or missing.”
Here we have to add: including some 300 unborn children from Malta, abducted and subsequently aborted beyond Maltese shores.
Abela also said: “Compared to other countries, Malta’s numbers are small, but that should not stop us from strengthening and improving the systems already in place.” There is widespread agreement on this in Malta.
Abela really put his finger on it the right thing when he said “ensuring children’s well-being and protection from harm will always be an intrinsic part of the Maltese people’s core values”.
We should add “...and we should do what it takes to keep it that way.”.
Then he gave some very grim statistics, like that international statistics show that 76 per cent of children are killed within three hours of abduction.
In 2013, at the Pro-Life Day manifestation in favour of life organised by the Malta Unborn Child Movement (MUCM) in Valletta, Abela, as representative of the Labour Party declared: “Abortion is illegal and that is how it should remain – it is nothing less than murder.”
He had also declared that “parents were obliged to do their utmost and protect their offspring from the moment of conception... Society and the State were also in duty bound to support mothers during their pregnancies and help them provide a good quality of life to their newborns”.
Last year, it was reported that government backbencher Deo Debattista had urged the government to set up a ‘pro-life’ clinic to help expectant mothers thinking of aborting their unborn children. This newspaper also quoted Rebecca Gomperts, the Dutch provider of abortions on the high seas, as having said that about 300 expectant Maltese mothers aborted every year.
Very small Maltese unborn children, who have a legal status according to a number of Maltese laws, are being abducted out of Malta to be aborted... very sadly we have to add, by their parents... in UK and elsewhere.
What we don’t know, so far, is if the body parts, the tiny baby hearts, lungs and brains of aborted Maltese children are being callously harvested and sold, that is trafficked for profit, to university and company laboratories like Planned Parenthood, the largest abortion business in the US.
What we don’t know, so far, is if the body parts, the tiny baby hearts, lungs and brains of aborted Maltese children are being callously harvested and sold
The government and civil society should unite even further in their resolve to protect also the lives of these 300 unborn childen.
The way forward has been charted already by Deo Debattista. The government should help in as many ways as possible a number of voluntary organisations already working in this field, to reach out to these women and offer them further compassionate, counselling and advisory services, to help them spare the lives of their unborn children.
Labour MP Etienne Grech, chairperson of the Health Committee of Parliament seems to have other views. He said it was his belied that there can be no life without brain activity, quoting JM Rollingring’s theory that : “The brain is the only unique and irreplaceable organ in the human body, as the orchestrator of all organ systems and the seat of personality.”
For him, it appears, human life does not begin at conception.
Grech should take note of a very significant statement made by a bioethics expert Pierre Mallia in july: “It is a fact that life does begin at fertilisation... and that science is not absolute, as many make it out to be.”
He also said that “ resorting to so-called scientific advice that many base their arguments on can also be tantamount to deception if you choose the arguments that suit you.”
Yes, the well-being of all our children, from conception, unites us all. This is reflected in the fact that, so far, all four Maltese political parties declare that they are pro-life. This is something which does not exist in any other country in the world.
This has been demonstrated in Malta every year, in February, for the last 10 years when the MUCM organised Pro-Life Days which included the active participation, and pro-life speeches, of political parties and even the President.
Our supreme aim should be to keep it that way and to continue “to be proud to be the best in Europe” and the world, not only, as the Prime Minister said, “in having the lowest unemployment in the eurozone and a declining poverty rate” but also in protecting all Maltese and other children living in Malta “from conception”, as our laws state so explicitly...until the end of life.
That includes not legalising the morning-after pill when there is still a lot of doubt, scientifically, if it is abortifacient or not, notwithstanding the fact that the chairperson of the Medicines Authority is advising the authorities differently.
It also includes not going for widespread embryo freezing in connection with IVF when it is very likely that in the process unborn children, still in the embryonic stage, can be killed accidentally, or negligently.
Tony Mifsud is coordinator, Malta Unborn Child.