From 1973 to 2022, the US Supreme Court rulings in Roe v Wade (1973) and Planned Parenthood v Casey (1992) created and maintained federal protection for a pregnant woman’s right to get an abortion. On June 24, 2022, the US Supreme Court explicitly overturned Roe v Wade.
After the passage of Roe v Wade in 1973, Bernard Nathanson, a US obstetrician and gynaecologist, became director of obstetrics for a large hospital in New York. He was personally responsible for 75,000 abortions.
In 1984, he confessed he had been wrong. It was in that hospital that he had witnessed the form of a child on the ultrasound screen and the scientific mechanics of life that come with it.
He is often quoted as saying that abortion is “the most atrocious holocaust in the history of the United States”. He also wrote the book Aborting America in which he discussed what he called “the dishonest beginnings of the abortion movement”.
“We fed the public a line of deceit, dishonesty, a fabrication of statistics and figures. We succeeded because the time was right and the news media cooperated. We sensationalised the effects of illegal abortions and fabricated polls which indicated that 85 per cent of the public favoured unrestricted abortion, when we knew it was only five per cent. We unashamedly lied and, yet, our statements were quoted as though they had been written in law.”
In 1984, Nathanson directed and narrated the film titled The Silent Scream, which contained the ultrasound video of a mid-term (12 weeks) abortion.
His second documentary, Eclipse of Reason dealt with late-term abortions. He stated that the numbers he once cited for NARAL (the National Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws in the US) concerning the number of deaths linked to illegal abortions were “false figures”.
Referring to his previous work as an abortion provider and abortion rights activist, in his 1996 autobiography, Hand of God he wrote: “I am one of those who helped usher in this barbaric age.” Nathanson developed what he called the “vector theory of life”, which states that, from the moment of conception, there exists “a self-directed force of life that, if not interrupted, will lead to the birth of a human baby”.
There is a very wide perception that the Andrea Prudente case was fabricated- Tony Mifsud
In Malta, Isabel Stabile, an obstetrician and gynaecologist who spent many years in the US, seems not to have discovered, yet, decades after Nathanson’s discovery, that human life begins at conception. She promotes, talks and writes on abortion as if she is simply clamouring for the removal of warts and cancerous growths on women.
In a recent open letter to Prime Minister Robert Abela, entitled ‘Abortion: Your discomfort, her pain’, Stabile focused only on women and did not mention the unborn child once. And she happens to be an obstetrician who, by definition, is supposed “..to deliver babies and looks after the health of the mother and the baby during, before and after childbirth”.
Stabile also wrote: “It is the responsibility and duty of all elected officials to ensure that NO woman is ever prosecuted for being a woman!” Clearly this appears as “a false statement” because any prosecution in court, when it happens, is normally for the deliberate killing of a very small, innocent and indefensible human being.
This seems to be like “the dishonest beginnings of the abortion movement” referred to by Nathanson, only this time it is not in the US but in Malta. In fact, there is a very wide perception in Malta that the Andrea Prudente case and the latest court case, both related to abortion in Malta, were fabricated.
And, to enhance the perception further, now we also have the Malta National Commission for the Promotion of Equality, no less, “a government-funded organisation”, joining the abortion movement and calling for the decriminalisation of abortion in Malta.
No, we don’t want our prime minister to renege on his promise to the Maltese nation, given when he took office three years ago, that he will contest whoever promotes the abortion of unborn children in Maltese society.
Tony Mifsud studied politics and social affairs in Oxford.