On Monday, the amendment to the anti-abortion law cleared its second reading and Robert Abela insisted once more that it will not legalise abortion. Why? He says it will not affect viable pregnancies or foetuses viable outside the womb.

He should have a word with Andrea Dibben. In a debate organised by Times of Malta, she opened by saying why she supports this amendment: it “permits abortion in very specific and limited circumstances”.

Dibben is a principled pro-choice activist. She doesn’t think the law goes anywhere near far enough to give women the protection she says they need. But, like every official body or grouping that has come out in favour of the amendment – other than the prime minister and the Labour machine – she says the amendment will permit abortion.

In other words, she agrees with the amendment’s critics. The difference between critics and supporters isn’t about whether abortion is being legalised. It’s about how wide a door is thereby opened to abortion.

Can’t someone ask Abela whether Dibben is hallucinating?

His statement on Monday implied an unusual definition of abortion. Apparently, it’s not an abortion if doctors kill a foetus that would have died anyway.

Is there any authoritative definition of abortion that makes foetal viability the defining criterion?

Usually, voluntary abortion is defined by the means and intention. If you do anything deliberately aimed to kill the foetus – irrespective of the nobility of your motives or its life chances – that’s abortion.

Our current law depends on a distinction – rather too fine for some – between aiming to kill and doing something to save the mother whose side effect (foreseeable but unintended) is that the foetus dies. For the law, the ends do not justify the means.

In saying the amendment is not legalising abortion, Abela can only be doing one of two things. He may be saying that the amendment will permit no deliberate killing. In that case, why does he keep referring to the Andrea Prudente case, whose Maltese drama turned on doctors refusing to abort?

Otherwise, Abela is declaring that, in Malta alone, abortion is not defined by the means and intention. He’s saying the ends justify the means. Why make a fuss over the timing of foetal death when the only practical consequences concern the health of the mother?

His critics reply: because it might not just be a matter of timing and those might not be the only consequences.

The critics say you can’t legitimise deliberate killing. Once you do that, its scope can be broadened, for both legal and medical reasons, beyond your stated intention.

Who’s right? We can only tell if, during the committee stage, parliament gets to hear from experts and witnesses for both sides.

Given the lack of consensus about even basic facts, testimony before parliament could help test the arguments of both supporters and critics.

Before voting, the legislators need to be made aware of some of the typical conditions that the law would likely cover- Ranier Fsadni

Take the medical issues. The amendment’s supporters say they could cite many cases where women’s health was seriously threatened by the current law. Let them cite.

The critics say the principle of double effect has served us well. Let’s hear from doctors to see if the principle makes sense of how doctors need to think and act in practice. Or are defenders of the current law sticking up for a principle that’s unworkable if things get messy?

Suppose the principle is workable. What impact does it have on what doctors do and what impact does it have on the mother?

Supporters of the amendment say the current law “ties up doctors’ hands” – an image of passivity, of medical professionals killing time so as not to kill a dying foetus, while putting the mother’s health at grave risk.

But that’s not the only description we have. Opponents of the amendment offer a picture of active care. Time is not wasted; rather, the pregnancy is actively prolonged, under supervision, to maximise the foetus’s chances of survival outside the womb in case of premature delivery. The monitoring is incessant and, at the slightest sign of danger for the mother, saving action is taken.

Which picture is more true? We can’t tell if MPs don’t even ask.

There’s a second medical issue. We should not expect the law itself to specify which conditions count as grave threats to health. That would make the law unnecessarily cumbersome and add to the difficulty of adding or removing conditions.

Nonetheless, before voting, the legislators need to be made aware of some of the typical conditions that the law would likely cover. How else will they judge if the law can be strictly defined or whether, as the critics claim, it’s open to being stretched?

Finally, there is the legal issue. If the amendment ends up legalising abortion, even on strictly very narrow grounds, will the new law be open to legal challenge because it’s contradictory?

The anticipation of such legal challenges could in itself create more uncertainty for doctors than any they might have now. What do opposing legal authorities say?

In a debate where there is radical disagreement about the facts themselves, MPs cannot vote for or against this amendment, in good conscience, without the benefit of more information and testimony than the vast majority of them are likely to have right now.

ranierfsadni@europe.com