It was not until he was in his late teens that Emmet Dooley, who is now 37, became involved in the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children.

 “I was in high school and I was in favour of abortion in cases of rape, until I met a woman at University who was conceived in rape and realised she did not deserve the death penalty for the crime of her father. That was the turning point, as I realised that somebody has to safeguard the unborn,” he said. 

Some years down the line he became one of the faces of Project Truth, an initiative by the youth wing of the SPUC, a Scottish pro-life organisation established in 1967.

Project Truth has been going on for six years and the aim of the visit to Malta was to train volunteers from Life Network Foundation, an organisation whose beginnings are very similar to their movement, Mr Dooley said.

He insists that their approach is to engage politely with the public without trying to impose their views at all costs. 

“The beauty of life is on our side and all humans deserve a chance.”

For Eden Linton, 20, her involvement in the pro-life group was a result of her personal experience.

When she was just two years old, her parents were advised to seek an abortion, as the baby on the way would have severe disabilities and would only live a few days at most. At least, this is what the medical team had told them.

“They chose to keep the child, and despite her disability Josephine lived until she was four. When I grew older, I realised how much would have been missing from my life and of so many others inspired by her, had she not been given a chance to live,” she said.

Asked about their perspective on the ongoing debate in Malta, Mr Dooley, who is from Ireland, draws comparisons with the situation in his native country. 

In Malta, politicians are very accessible and this should be used to lobby in favour of life

While public opinion in Malta is very much skewed against abortion, even within the medical profession, concerns continue that abortion could be legalised.

“In Malta, politicians are very accessible and this should be used to lobby in favour of life,” he said.

The Life Network Foundation has criticised the government saying existing safeguards to the unborn in Maltese laws are either being diluted or removed completely.

Apart from the introduction of embryo freezing last year, the pro-life group is also critical of the recent changes to the Child Protection Act whereby references to the unborn have been removed.

Such concerns are also shared by the SPUC volunteers in Malta.

 “It is a danger to get into this slippery slope mentality, as once you start to introduce provisions and exceptions there is no way back. Abortion in the UK had been introduced for rare cases but now we are having over 200,000 abortions per year of which 98.2 per cent are not rare cases,” Louise Grant, 32, said.

“Legalisation of abortion does not happen overnight but gradually, and more often than not people do not realise it is happening,” she added.

Nils Muiznieks, the former Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights, had stoked controversy when, in a Times of Malta opinion article, he called for the legalisation of abortion in Malta, on the grounds that the existing ban was breaching women’s rights.

This state of affairs frequently fuels criticism from international pro-choice organisations, saying Malta has the strictest abortion laws in the world.

Mr Dooley draws parallels with the situation in Ireland in the run-up to the introduction of abortion saying such appeals are a form of “ideological colonisation”. 

“It was so embarrassing for the pro-choice lobby to have Ireland banning abortion,” he said.

“Prior to the legalisation of abortion in Ireland, there used to be 2,250 cases per year but now we are having 800 per month. The rate has almost quadrupled,” he added.

“The trauma of having an abortion is not the fact you have to board a plane to do it abroad, but the act itself.”

The volunteers believe that the disservice to pregnant women in crisis does not lie in the fact that abortion is banned but stems from the lack of support they receive from the State.

Malta is still in time to prevent the legalisation of abortion but this depends largely on the will of its people, Mr Dooley says.