Lately, Tonio Fenech, the Parliamentary Secretary at the Finance Ministry, showed his pleasure at the fact that his Ministry's scheme had succeeded not only to halt the flight of financial capital but also to bring back from abroad some Lm63 million so far which were undeclared - a staggering sum indeed. He has very good reasons to feel pleased with himself.
Last year Dr Rebecca Gomperts, a Dutch doctor who has a ship roaming outside Malta's territorial waters offering free abortions to women in distress, finally succeeded not only to have one of her doctors enter Maltese waters to offer free abortions to Maltese women but also to do so on Maltese soil and, to boot, also on state television - and nobody stopped him, in spite of our laws prohibiting abortion.
So probably we have another type of "boat people" or "illegal emigrants" - besides "illegal immigrants" - navigating the sea between Malta and somewhere outside its territorial waters. This time with the criminal intent not of taking undeclared money out of Malta, but of taking unborn children out of Malta to terminate their lives through abortion.
This besides those who fly to the UK, Sicily and wherever for the same purpose despite the law dating more than 100 years forbidding abortions and the provisions of the Children's and Young Persons Act of 1980, the Commisioner for Children Act of 2003 and the Domestic Violence Act of 2005.
Yet these flights, by plane or by boat, unlike the flight of financial capital, are not troubling the consciences and minds of our politicians, the forces of law and order and the caring profession... so far. There is no plan to halt, this time not the flight of financial capital, but the flight of innocent and defenceless unborn children out of Malta for the purpose of abortion.
This time the problem is about the fundamental human right to life from its very beginning. The government boasts, rightly, of being the champion of human life from its very beginning. Therefore it should be more pro-active in this regard and take its moral and legal obligations much more seriously, in the same resolute way it has dealt with the flight of capital out of Malta.
It should devise a strategy, a scheme, a plan, to halt the flight of unborn children out of Malta for the purpose of abortion not necessarily by punishing law-breakers but by creating the necessary compassionate, advisory and theraputic services for those pregnant women, and their partners, who would be considering solving their problems through abortion.
After all, this is already written in the Domestic Violence Law, but so far has remained a dead letter implicitly condoning the death of unborn children. If something has started already, the public in not aware of it. The promotional campaign on the means of communication has not started yet. Results can be partially measured against a potential decrease in abortions by Maltese nationals as these appear on the official yearly statistics of that country.
If the Gift of Life Foundation, an NGO, has found the means to create these services, why not the government, which already has much greater human and financial resources at its disposal. Why not a joint venture, after all? A public-private partnership.
If our military pesonnel are the ones halting illegal immigration, the National Commission against Domestic Violence and the social work personnel of Agenzija Appogg, the designated authority for this purpose, should be the ones to halt illegal emigration for the purpose of abortion.
This time it is not about recovering lost money and lost revenue for the government. It is a nobler mission. It is about saving very young Maltese lives from atrocious death.
Mr Mifsud is the co-ordinator of the Movement for the Rights, Protection and Development of the Unborn Child