Security of the person

Pro-abortion C. John Zammit of Ontario (June 2) demeans erudite pro-life opinionists who argued their case against abortion on sound ethical principles. He insultingly called their efforts “comical” and “cruel to women”.

He quoted someone saying that according to the US constitution “A woman has every right to make her own reproductive choices”. That may be so but a woman who does not want to be pregnant should not allow herself to get into that state and her reproductive rights do not give her the freedom to destroy a human life helplessly dependent on hers for a few months. If a woman decides to have an abortion, it is she who would be cruel. Personal rights involve responsibility in their use. The right to life is supreme at any stage of human existence.

Zammit also advances the Roe & Wade US Supreme Court case that opened the way to abortion but he fails to add that the perpetrator of that notorious case regretted her action when she became aware of the worldwide genocide by abortion resulting from that court judgment, which was strangely based on privacy laws and not on the more relevant superior laws related to the sanctity of human life!

Quoting Canada’s Supreme Court, Zammit says that “forcing a woman, by threat of criminal action, to carry a foetus to term... is a profound interference with a woman’s body and, thus, a violation of her security of the person”.

This statement wrongly implies that a woman has a legal right to abort a pregnancy for any reason while the law cannot save her offspring. In truth, abortion is unethical interference with a woman’s body aggravated by the deliberate killing of human life. Irrespective of legalised excuses to justify it, abortion remains wrong on the part of the woman who wants it and a criminal act on the part of the abortionist.

John Pace – Victoria

Simply frustrating

It seems I am not one of the lucky 86,000 who managed to download their certificate as touted by the health minister. After several failed attempts to do so, I sought help by sending an e-mail with all the necessary details to the e-mail address provided on the website and four successive gentle reminders but I had no response whatsoever to any of them.

I phoned 145 and was advised to go to a hub and have my certificate downloaded there. I did so, only to be faced with another disappointment as the person in charge could not download the certificate.

This is very frustrating, knowing I will definitely need the certificate when I go abroad early next month. What is most unfair is I will certainly meet with uncalled-for hassle because I do not have this certificate in hand, besides having to pay for a swab test on my return. Why should I be made to pay for the temperamental quirks of computers or shoddy websites, if not downright incompetence?

When I had my vaccines I was given a card, where the batch, brand and date of when the vaccines were taken were recorded on the card. Why can’t I use this card as proof of being vaccinated?

Please, could those who are in charge of setting up this website make sure that it is working well to avoid unnecessary frustration to those who use it?

Antoinette Azzopardi – Nadur

Steps to follow

Further to previous readers’ letters regarding the difficulty in generating the vaccine certificate leading to a massive backlog of e-mails, I wonder why the authorities cannot simply issue clear instructions to negate all the extra work.

The iPhone version of the site doesn’t even include an individual drop down for date of birth, necessitating (in my case) having to scroll back month by month for 60 years!  One slip of the finger and you’re back to the present day. After several attempts, I gave up! Moving onto the laptop, I encountered issues with Safari. The site via this browser does not indicate how dates are to be entered (in full/in figures/abbreviated) and the helpful (?) feature to distinguish the ID card number from the card document number was not working.

There are only four pieces of information required to obtain the certificate, so surely issuing clear guidance on each would make life so much easier for residents and for the authorities. Even 145 provided the wrong information, insisting that the document number had to include the MT at the start – it does not!

So, to help readers, here are my tips to avoid the many pitfalls of entering the four simple pieces of information. Don’t even bother trying to use an iPhone. It may be better with Android, who knows? Use the Google browser, not Safari. Enter your ID card (the number on the back, ending A for foreigners or L for Maltese).

Enter your date of birth in the format dd/mm/yyyy. Enter your document number – this is the number at the top right of the card, starting MT but do not enter the letters, just the number (If it doesn’t work the first time, add a 7 to the start). Enter your last vaccine date in the same format as your date of birth – dd/mm/yyyy.

That’s all there is to it.

Janet Wojtkow – St Julian’s

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