Letting sleeping dogs lie

To be honest, as a layman I was puzzled by Giovanni Bonello’s explanation of why Malta’s criminal code does not make therapeutic abortion a crime (November 29).

I follow Bonello’s argument that one must look at the entirety of a law to correctly understand what the meaning and application of any of its provisions should be.

He then relates article 241 of the criminal code, which states that applying procedures to secure any abortion constitutes a crime, to article 223, which provides the “mitigating context” that keeps therapeutic abortion outside the purview of article 241.

Article 223 exempts causing “bodily harm” or “homicide” from being considered a criminal offence when “imposed by actual necessity either in lawful self-defence or in the lawful defence of another person”.

Nowhere does article 241 mention causing bodily harm or homicide. And it is not clear how self-defence comes into a situation of therapeutic abortion.

There is no definition that I can find of self-defence in the criminal code itself. A definition I have been given culled from outside Maltese law is the following:

Self defence “is defined as the right to prevent suffering force or violence through the use of a sufficient level of counteracting force or violence”. This does not apply at all to the situation of a therapeutic abortion.

As a layman, I can only suspect that a main reason why no prosecutions over therapeutic abortions have been carried out in the past and up to now is the Maltese common sense one, “to let sleeping dogs lie”, rather than because the law states this.

But a populist government and/or judiciary could easily give up on such an approach.

Alfred Sant – Birkirkara

From the online comments board:

EU pulls internal guidelines on disputed ‘inclusive’ language

Helena Dalli

 Helena Dalli, the quintessential Labour manipulator, should be ashamed to try to cancel the cultural roots of Europe in the name of equality. I expect Robert Abela to declare whether he is in favour of the internal document. And please, Dr Abela, do not hide behind the “internal” nature of the document. We need to know loud and clear what you think on this issue. – R. Camilleri

Dalli messed it up big way. It is a fundamental right for someone to choose and/or keep his name. No inclusive guidelines can deny this or force someone to change his name or force him to respond to some other name. This is the result you get when you mess up too much with values! – Ri Mifsud

Is this what we have to worry about in these turbulent days? Do these politically correct people (at least, that’s what they call themselves) have nothing better to do? In the good old days, nobody bothered about this trivia. The most important things is to respect and love thy neighbour (whoever he or she is) as thyself, whatever you call him or her. I don’t mind people saying to me: “How do you do, old man?” – Joseph Attard

Dalli is a very scary individual who should have never been given all this power. Her views belong to the far left and are obsolete. Let’s not forget that the far left is as dangerous as the far right. – Drin Zerafa

Malta once again trying to show how modern it is. And then the country is like a medieval fiefdom by Labour. – Adrian Borg Cardona

Protestors urge Anġlu Farrugia, Rosianne Cutajar to go

I think they are making valid and reasonable demands. The government is clearly here to stay but it needs to be made up of people with integrity. Rosianne and Anġlu have shown that they do not have integrity. They also have no shame because no mob will ever convince them to resign. The only way out for them is to be voted out of office. There are people on that voting ticket who deserve your vote much more than them, even within Labour. – Chris Xuereb

Looks like Christmas is coming. The agenda is to destroy, crush and impair the economic well-being of the businesses in Valletta. This has backfired tremendously on earlier occasions and will backfire once again. It seems Bernard Grech and his gang aren’t satisfied with the colossal dismay suffered in yesterday’s survey and they’re doing everything to increase the gap. Quite clearly, in this, at least, they’re succeeding. – James Calleja