Government, MLP clash again over abortion

The government and the Labour Party yesterday lashed out at each other again over the issue of abortion and the EU.

The government reiterated that there was no condition or obligation to legalise abortion on any country joining the EU.

It would continue to stress its anti-abortion position even after Malta entered the EU, the Department of Information said in a statement yesterday.

"There should be no doubt about this, despite the manipulation of the Malta Labour Party and its leader."

The DOI was reacting to a statement issued on the matter by the MLP on Monday in which the government was accused of being in a state of panic and of hiding from the public what was going on in the negotiations with the EU.

Proof of this, the MLP had said, was the official government statement issued on Sunday to counter what MLP leader Alfred Sant had said in a speech in Dingli.

Dr Sant had accused the prime minister of being so obsessed with joining the EU that he would accept abortion if it were to be made a condition for membership.

But the government had then responded by saying his words were most defamatory and surpassed the limits of decency expected of a person in public life.

"One would have to have lost all sense of values to come up with such a deceitful calumny, while knowing it to be untrue," the government had said.

The DOI said yesterday said it appeared that the MLP and its leader did not distinguish between fishing and abortion - between business and moral principles - as in its statement on Monday it had also referred to negotiations with the EU on a variety of subjects, ranging from fishing to farming, property to visas and North African tourists.

The Labour Party was trying to create doubts over the abortion issue to confuse people, the DOI said.

This showed the low level to which the MLP was stooping in its obsession to be against the EU "at all costs", it added.

Reacting to the DOI statement, the MLP said it was the government, through the Malta-EU Information Centre, that had mixed in the abortion question with the negotiations over other issues such as fishing and property, through its repeated advertising on state broadcasting media.

And it was Dr Fenech Adami, it said, who had arranged for European Parliament President Pat Cox to speak to Malta's parliament about the EU and abortion.

"The European Parliament had then passed a resolution that interferes in how Malta regulates its abortion laws, by insisting that abortion should be allowed here.

"Before this, the Labour Party or its exponents, including Alfred Sant, had never raised the subject of abortion."

The MLP said Dr Sant had been more than justified in saying that Dr Fenech Adami would accept abortion as a condition for joining the EU.