Whenever a new initiative crops up, you do have to ask, "Cui bono?" ("Who benefits by it?") Often, the supposed beneficiary is not the one being pushed forward, but somebody else who lurks in the background.

The new initiative - which Media Today's Saviour Balzan seems quite excited about - is, sadly and stupidly, abortion. Mr Balzan wrote: "This is the beginning of a long campaign, but it is bound to endure a lot of bumpy rides and it will not be an easy campaign." Just so that we know who the actors in this macabre play are, these are the words of someone who, despite all the attempts at hide-and-seek, gives the impression that deep down he is all out for abortion.

Mr Balzan was referring to a group of miniscule associations that have banded together to promote "women's rights". For once, Mr Balzan (whom I deeply dislike - it is reciprocated, don't you worry) expressed a thought I can easily and completely share: "There is little doubt that the Muscat administration's progressive reforms in gay rights, gay conversion and civil unions have galvanised these women campaigners to come forward."

Yes, all said and done, Joseph Muscat will have to foot the historical bill for the pro-abortion climate that has come to this country. The moral fibre of the country has been ruined. And, like a naughty boy who has eaten all the cookies in the jar, Dr Muscat even seems proud of this great achievement - L-Aqwa Żmien and all that.

But let's not jump the gun. Let's walk-through the analysis of the present situation.

Only fools would rush in

This group of associations, which represent a minority of voters, aims to convince the electorate that the country needs abortion. This when Eurostat figures for 2017 show that while France had the highest fertility rate in the EU, Malta had the absolute lowest. And these associations claim - inspired by a warped logic - that Malta needs abortion.

They also claim that the beneficiaries will be women, who can now have complete control of their bodies.

One would have thought that abstinence, contraceptives, the natural method, self-control, and so on, were all different aspects of having complete control over one's body. That women who willingly engage in the sexual act and are not careful, and only when they realise they are pregnant want complete control of their bodies seems to me to be putting the cart before the horse. (Lovin Malta will consider this piece of advice as patronising. No kidding.)

The horse is a good metaphor. Do you remember the Greek mythological figure, the Centaur, half-human, half-horse? The Centaur's upper part is human; the Centaur's lower part is equine. The Greeks had a very clear message in mind: our human part (reason) should control our animal part (sexual instincts). We are not slaves to our animal instincts.

But, these pro-abortion campaigners will tell you, "What about rape?"

This seems to be the crucial question for these associations. Rape.

A respected gynaecologist has argued that the number of rapes in Malta is inflated. This has enraged the pro-abortion campaigners whose response was that some women are raped by their partners, who want to impregnate them in order to subjugate them.

This is dangerous ground. The argument seems to be that the couple do not agree on whether to conceive a child, and the man decides to do it without the woman's prior consent not because he wants a child but because he wants to tame the shrew that is his wife/partner. What a price to pay to stay in a relationship with a headstrong, obdurate woman!

And how exactly do you put a woman in her place by making her pregnant? I remember reading a 2010 study which said that neurotic women are more fertile and have more babies than their laid-back female counterparts, but I wonder whether this is what the associations have in mind.

Then again, if the woman has no intention of conceiving a child, why not teach her to use contraceptives or the natural method, or better still, use her brains and abstain from intercourse, or simply leave a man she clearly doesn't love (enough)? Why allow her to depend on the man's behaviour if there are doubts, only then to offer her abortion?

Moreover, who assures us that this is not the woman's paranoia or the man's bragging about subjugating his partner? How can that be verified? It could just be nothing more than bragging to hide the shame of not having behaved in a manly fashion and exercised self-control. This type of analysis is very close to what the Italians refer to as fare il processo alle intenzioni, that is to say trying to discover people's motivations by reading their minds.

This is all so volatile and whimsical and not only. This is actually an invitation to open the door to abortion-on-demand because all women can argue that they have been raped. How to determine whether the couple really wants a child or whether the man "raped" her to conceive a child in order to subjugate her to his "patriarchal power"? Should they stipulate a specific contract, renewable every six months?

Mad (mind you, not madcap) liberalism opens many a can of worms; it is a labyrinth where the individual is lost in freedom and ends up devoured by the Minotaur of egotism.

 

Big money

So far, it is all very subjective. Let's move to the objective questions we should be asking ourselves about the big money involved in the abortion industry.

Where is this big money?

Let's consider at least two aspects of the industry. The provision of the service and the sale of the resulting product.

If one abortion costs, say €1,000 and there are 400 abortions a year, that's €400,000 a year for the provision of the service. Who will pocket this money if it is provided by the private sector? Or, if it is provided by the public sector, why should we spend this money when the country's birth rate is so low?

With regard to the sale of the resulting product, consider that in 2014 in the United States, the National Institute of Health spent $76 million on research using foetal tissue, that is, pieces of aborted babies.

Foetal tissue is not used only for medical research. It can also be used in other industries, such as the soft drink industry. Check whether your soft drink contains HEK 293. HEK stands for "Human Embryonic Kidney" cells. The flavour in your soft drink might have been obtained from chemicals from the cells of a healthy foetus legally aborted in The Netherlands.

There is big money involved in the abortion industry.

 

Useful idiots

Are the campaigners we are seeing on TV and on newspaper photographs on anybody's secret payroll? Are newspapers and news portals indirectly promoting the pro-abortion agenda being secretly funded? I would not know.

It might also be the case that they are "useful idiots", that is people who believe the ideology and are ready to campaign for it without understanding, or ignoring the fact, that behind the ideology there is big money.

 

How big is this big money?

We live in times that certain thinkers refer to as "Late Capitalism". There is big money behind many of the battle cries of the extreme liberalism of Late Capitalism.

The cannabis market in Canada - the world leader in that market - is worth $16 billion.

Worldwide, pornography rakes in more or less US$97 billion.

The extent of the LGBT market in the US is estimated at $884 billion, and £6 billion in the UK.

A study has calculated that doctor-assisted suicide (euthanasia) could save Canada up to $139 million each year in end-of-life care.

In 2016, the global market for assisted reproductive technology (ART) was worth US$2,210 million. With an estimated growth rate of 6.3 per cent per annum between 2017 and 2025, the expected worth in 2024 is US$3,779 million.

 

The conservative alternative

The Conservative is opposed to these extreme liberal "achievements". The Conservative believes that unborn children should not be killed and the dying should be taken care of. The Conservative is very sceptical about pornography, cannabis, and ART, and has many reservations with regard to same-sex marriage and child adoption.

There is clearly no money in the conservative vision, because, all told, it is essentially an anti-business stance. And if there is no business objective to pursue (this type of business I mean, not traditional business), there is no money to be made.

Conservatives are usually pro-democracy. More than the extreme Liberals, who tend to get angry with them, and try to delegitimise the Conservatives.

It might be that that day will soon dawn when Late Capitalism will not require democracy any longer, and the extreme Liberals will simply take over. They will enforce the ideology that if your wife or girlfriend wants to terminate your baby, it's fine. Or if you don't feel like becoming a mother, its fine as well: it's your life, your body, your choice.

Thank you Joseph, for creating this climate. You even admitted lately, to Politico, that your "recipe to get into power, and stay there, is to embrace ... capitalism". By which you mean this Late Capitalism and its sleazy partner, Extreme Liberalism.

 

Bottom line

The thing with abortion, as with almost everything else liberal, is this. If only a few do it, it's a fact and you don't fret about it. But if it is normalised - like the NHS in Britain tries to do, for reasons which I cannot completely understand, by stating that almost one in every three British woman have had an abortion (why?) - then it becomes problematic. Theft happens all the time, but it has not been normalised. Private property is still considered "sacred". Once normalisation sets in, then problems begin. Mostly for one's serenity of mind. Because once the "morality" (mores) changes, then the social order (ordo) changes too. And, as Slavoj ?i?ek has pointed out, "we increasingly experience our freedom as a burden that causes unbearable anxiety".

I think that the recent wave of crime knife in Britain is an example of this phenomenon.

I try to offer a "philosophical" angle to my articles. Those who cannot understand the "serenity of mind" aspect do not need "philosophy" but other fields of knowledge. ?i?ek, for instance, is not only a philosopher but also a psychoanalyst.

 

My Personal Library (41)

According to the blurb on the book's back cover, Rose Holz's The Birth Control Clinic in a Marketplace World (University of Rochester Press, 2012) is the "first book to chart the origins and evolution of the charity birth control clinic movement in the United States from the 1910s throughout the 1970s". Rose Holz "uncovers the virtually unexamined relationship between Planned Parenthood and the commercial marketplace sphere".

This book deals, in an intelligent way, with the way charity organisations established links with the commercial world in the United States, how "charity clinics increasingly used commercial techniques to reach impoverished communities and adopted the language of consumer choice to make appealing the services they offered to potential clientele. In short, the lines between business and charity work are not so easily drawn, despite the birth control propaganda and the subsequent birth control historiography that often suggested otherwise" (p. 4).

Image: The Centauride or Female Centaur