The pro-abortion beast is raising its ugly head again. As we live in benighted times, it is making hay while the ... full moon shines. The PN is still in the labour ward giving birth to its new self under a new leadership, and Labour has now become a neoliberal werewolf, not even pretending to be dressed up in social-democratic sheep’s clothing.

I say “benighted” mostly because whereas we believe we live in the light of knowledge, in reality we still stumble around in the darkness of myths.

One such myth is that abortion has been depenalised in England when in fact, abortion is still a crime there. In 1967, when David Steel of the Liberal Democrats presented his private member’s bill on abortion, the procedure was not depenalised. The law simply made exceptions to the rule, citing medical criteria. In other words, if two doctors agree in good faith that a pregnancy should be terminated – within certain restrictions – then if a doctor performs the procedure, there is no criminal liability. All other abortions are penalised.

The sad truth is that those exceptions are being rampantly abused.

In 2007, The Guardian reported David Steel saying that “abortion is being used as a form of contraception in Britain”, [admitting] he never anticipated “anything like” the current number of terminations when leading the campaign for reform. The Liberal Democrat peer [said] an “irresponsible” mood has emerged in which women feel they can turn to abortion ‘if things go wrong’. “Everybody can agree that there are too many abortions” ...’

Earlier this year, The Telegraph reported that new tests could lead to sex-selective abortions, meaning you can choose to terminate the pregnancy if the baby is not of the desired sex. “Forcing pregnant women who do not want a child of one sex or the other to give birth could harm both the baby and the mother's mental health, a leading doctors’ union member has said.” In a Jungian or even Dostoyevsky-like twist to the story, the doctor in question is called Wendy Savage.

So the truth (as opposed to myth) is this: (i) abortion is still penalised in England; (ii) liberalising abortion does not do away with the back-street variant, it simply brings a shift in mentality to accept abortion as contraception; and (iii) back-street abortions continue for those who want something more, which means that once you push the door slightly ajar you have to keep opening it wider and wider.

While on the subject of myths, but on a different topic this time, another myth was flagged to me by a friend. He wrote on Facebook that in the 19^th century, Malta adopted Great Britain’s Penal Code which criminalised homosexuality. I asked my friend where he got this information from, and he referred me to a Wikipedia page, which in turn refers to a book published by Routledge, no less: Who’s Who in Gay and Lesbian History: From Antiquity to World War II (Vol. 1). It carries an entry by Maltese-Australian lawyer Joseph Chetcuti on the situation in Malta.

The adoption of Great Britain’s Penal Code is not only a myth but also an ignoble lie.

First of all, there never was something called the Penal Code of Great Britain! I am mystified that the book’s editors published this piece of historical fiction, if it is what Mr Chetcuti really wrote.

Secondly, when Malta finally got its Criminal Code in 1854, it was an amended version of the Code of the Two Sicilies of 1819, which in turn was a version of the French Penal Code of 1810. Our Code underwent a lengthy gestation period, and risked getting aborted a number of times. In the 1840s, the original text was modified by the Scottish lawyer Andrew Jameson, much to the chagrin of the Maltese members of the commission tasked with drafting the text. Despite Jameson’s interventions, the Code maintained its strong link with its Sicilian and French progenitors. To say that Malta adopted Great Britain’s Penal Code is both absurd and heretical from the legal history point of view.

Lastly, the Maltese favoured the trend espoused in the Penal Codes of France and the Italian states of being tolerant toward “irregular” sexual behaviour, such as incest, bestiality and homosexuality. The fixation with criminalising sex was puritanical and British, and had little support in Malta. Jameson, the Scottish lawyer engaged by the colonial administration, wrote in his report that “no man who is acquainted with the South of Europe will hesitate to declare, that the tone of public sentiment with regard to [these] offences is much in need of improvement” (pp. 112-113). Indeed, as Mr Chetcuti himself points out, when a Maltese male law professor was charged and found guilty of inappropriate behaviour with a British sailor, “all the elected members of the Legislative Council, the Archbishop of Malta, and 3,000 citizens petitioned for his release”.

In this case, the truth is (i) the Maltese did not adopt the (fictitious) Penal Code of Great Britain ... because there wasn’t one; (ii) the Maltese followed the French and Sicilian Codes when drafting their own Criminal Code; and (iii) the Maltese were not in favour of socially castigating “irregular” sexual behaviour when the Criminal Code was promulgated in the mid-19^th century, but were tolerant and lenient.

I think it is important to avoid myths. It is the duty of those who take part in public debates to keep to the truth as can be found in, or deduced from, documents.