At the moment we have two “campaigns” on abortion floating about. Minister for Justice and Home Affairs Dr Tonio Borg has declared that government is proposing to entrench the ban on abortion in the Constitution. At the same time, there is a media campaign spearheaded by a group calling itself Gift of Life peddling the message that life starts from conception. Various “personalities”, including my partner Peppi Azzopardi, tell us their age adding “… u disa’ xhur”.

In my view, both Dr Borg’s declaration about the Constitution and the Gift of Life campaign are not so much wrong as misguided. Both are intent on stirring up emotions and galvanising prejudices rather than inviting thought. And deep, careful and unfettered thought is what this issue requires, particularly at present. Treacly billboards, television commercials and high-spirited ministerial rhetoric are the antithesis of thought. They are intended to railroad you into a position before you have even looked at what’s at issue.

Allow me to give a bit of a political context. The ministerial statement and the Gift of Life campaign are intended to condition the debate in the Parliamentary Committee draft proposals on the first-ever bioethics law. Without saying so, both the minister and Gift of Life are engaging in political lobbying, pure and simple.

Herein lies the first problem. It is not the introduction of abortion that is being debated but a law to regulate bioethics. The two are related but not identical. Abortion is based on a key premise: a pregnant woman has the right to destroy the individual living inside her because she, and only, she should have control over her body. In terms of legal rights, abortion amounts to the State sanctioning the removal of an individual’s right to life in order to satisfy a presumed higher good – the woman’s right to absolute self-determination.

Now does anyone in his or her right mind think that this line of thought has a hope in hell of finding its way into Maltese law today? It does not even find its way into the Maltese media or political debate, let alone in the law. Abortion is illegal in Malta because there is a strong national consensus that there is no higher good than an individual’s right to life. Malta is against abortion because it defines the voluntary and premeditated taking away of an individual’s life as murder. Without any qualification or mitigating circumstances.

In Malta, the right to life is framed differently from the way it is in, say, the UK or The Netherlands. In these countries, the foetus is not considered to be on the same legal footing as an individual and is therefore granted only a conditional right to life. In Malta, the foetus’ right to life is identical to that of an adult, including its mother. In this light, Dr Borg’s call to entrench the ban on abortion in the constitution is spurious. The ban on abortion is already entrenched. A Constitution is not a treatise in political philosophy but a reflection of a nation’s cultural, social and historical soul.

Herein lies the heart of the matter or, rather, the confusion at the heart of the government’s and the Gift of Life’s campaigns. The sticking point in the current debate in the Parliamentary Committee on Bioethics is not whether an individual has a right to life but the point at which a new individual comes into being.

Now in Catholic Malta it is believed that a new individual comes into being the moment the tip of a squiggly sperm kisses the outer boundary of an ovum. It is thought of as the unwritten 11th commandment. And anyone who questions its veracity is instantly labelled a heretic, a non-believer or, worse still, a fan of Hitler’s extermination camps.

The truth, alas, is no longer found in such a simplistic and ignorant answer to an extremely difficult question. The debate on the point at which a new individual comes into being is inextricably bound by new scientific discoveries. A couple of simple facts will suffice to show that life – no pun intended – is more difficult than the Gift of Life billboards lead us to believe. Until the point that the new entity resulting from fertilisation is made up of 14 cells – around a week – it can theoretically give rise to 14 separate individuals.

The implication is obvious. Secondly, until around two weeks after fertilisation an embryo can divide in two and give rise to twins. The question is obvious: How can you speak of an ‘individual’ before the point at which it has the capacity to become two? Clearly, science has rendered traditional religious beliefs on reproduction questionable, to say the least. Everything indicates that it will continue to do so in the foreseeable future.

With this backdrop, the Gift of Life campaign is a deception, it is fuelled by emotional blackmail and it feeds on people’s ignorance of scientific trends. It is a deception because it claims that life starts from conception when this only begs the questions. At issue is what is conceived at the point of fertilisation and beyond.

For this reason, it would be nonsensical for Parliament to insert a clause in the Constitution saying something like, “An individual’s life starts at conception”. Since the question of what is being conceived is heavily, although not totally, influenced by science, it would amount to exposing a constitutional clause to the relentless tornado of scientific discovery. Interpreting the Constitution would be a legal nightmare. It would be an exact replay of the constitutional absurdity, which resulted from the insertion of the non-alignment clause in the run up to the 1987 election. And with the same result. The Cold War ended in Malta more than a decade ago. Yet Malta still has a Constitution, which assumes that it is alive and well, that the American eagle and the Soviet bear are still battling it out.

The Gift of Life campaign uses emotional blackmail because it is intended to make people feel rather than think. It dupes people into accepting that unless they believe they were “born” the moment daddy’s sperm touched mummy’s embryo they are supporting murder. And it is based on ignorance because rather than inform, educate and generate debate, it aims to lock people into their traditional and very local prejudices.

I do not claim to know for certain when a cell or a group of cells become an individual. Even the question humbles me, let alone the answer. Nevertheless, I am certain of one thing. Touchy feely billboards, TV commercials and strong ministerial rhetoric are not going to give me the answers that millions of scientists, thinkers and politicians around the world are still grappling with.

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