Given that all three political parties have clearly stated their pro-life, anti-abortion positions, what need is there to entrench it in the Constitution? Why now? Why not when we gained Independence in 1964? Has our opinion changed? Are we more anti-abortion now than we were before?

Because of EU membership and exposure to liberal thinking across the continent? If so, did the negotiation of a special deal on the issue, guaranteeing that Malta will never be obliged to change its laws on abortion by the EU mean absolutely nothing? Is a majority of 85 per cent not sufficient to guarantee that abortion will remain a crime? Are we legislating for the future once we have every reason to be sure of the present?

Are we not confident that we can pass on our values to the next generations? If not, will binding them by constitutional provision make any difference? If we are assuming that the anti-abortion camp will eventually become a minority, what is the democratic significance of blockading the issue with a two-thirds majority today? And the moral significance? Does the 85 per cent majority, including myself, which believes that abortion is wrong concede that it could someday become right if 66.6 per cent of the Maltese think so? It will never become right for me.

Why only abortion? Do not other heinous crimes also deserve the same constitutional protection? How about murder? Rape? Theft? Why not the whole Criminal Code? Why is abortion more horrendous than paedophilia?

Will the constitutional provision bring about any practical change? As it is, the day after pill is not available in pharmacies since it is designated an abortifacient. Are we so very sure that it is not available at all? Will the tag be extended to Intra Uterine Devices (IUDs) now recommended by doctors to women who cannot use the pill? Will there be a clamp down on knitting needles, parsley seeds and airline tickets to the UK? Will pre-menopausal Maltese women be required to deposit urine samples when travelling in and out of Malta? What other zany measures will Tonio Borg introduce?

What happens with in vitro fertilisation? Will the fertilised ova be considered human or will we split hairs and make a distinction between conception in the womb and conception in vitro? Has the minister decided the profound moral issues involved and found a comfortable, pragmatic, Nationalist, non-Catholic compromise in this case? Is he seeking Catholic support by contradicting the Vatican? Is this a repeat of the divorce/cohabitation equivocation?

Will constitutional amendment make the least bit of difference to the number of abortions carried out on Maltese women? With 600 abortions carried out in the UK in the past 10 years and probably many more in countries where no nationality-specific records are kept, is not Malta much more abortifacient than Finland with its 400 legal abortions per year but with a much larger population?

The Constitution prescribes the defence of the landscape in its first few lines, what does it mean to us when we look around us? It also imposes a balance in broadcasting. Two out of three political parties own television stations, how does the balance work out in the presence of three political parties? Ask the inmates of Safi what our human rights provisions mean to them. Don’t ask Tonio Borg why he has not yet allowed journalists to see them. In 1988 Malta was declared a Nuclear Free Zone. Did it make any practical difference since Nuke submarines traverse our territorial waters and also visit our harbours?.

How will constitutional amendment prevent abortion? Will it be worth more than the paper it is written on? Will the number of out-of-wedlock and under-age pregnancies be reduced because we have changed the Constitution? If it will change nothing, is it not about time that we start some serious education to prevent the procreation of a new generation of children brought up by children? Should we not be talking of contraception and proper sex education rather than making symbolic and ineffective gestures about abortion?

In fact, once the matter is settled once and for all, would it not be more comfortable to discuss the issue of abortion? Are we so sure that constitutional amendment will end the debate that has never begun? Will it not have the effect of starting a debate that the majority does not want to entertain? Are we so sure that our permanent consolidation of the status quo, the export of abortion, will prevent a liberal debate? Or will it bring about liberal exasperation and open the debate on a host of issues far beyond the fanta-politics of abortion?

Is this an authentic debate for people other than for the very sincere lobbyists? Are politicians taking them for a ride? In Labour days was it not the divorce debate that was used as a smokescreen to divert attention from the dire economic situation? Is this a repeat performance by the other troupe?

Is the PN attempting to consolidate its hold on the Catholic-first minority? Will it boast forever afterwards that it was the party to carry out this sacred task? Unlike others who did not take the initiative or were not even in Parliament to vote it through? Will it monopolise abortion like it does EU membership?

Or is this the PNs version of public consultation? Is it not a bit too fishy that the government is decisive about pension reform, health care reform, labour rights and deficit reduction measures but desperately seeking consensus where consensus has always existed? Is the PN so desperate to win something that it seeks a walkover on this?

Do they think that the whole country is stupid or just enough of us to make a difference? Do they imagine that we can all be led by the nose simply by arousing our religious feelings and/or our revulsion to abortion? Is this not the extreme of cynicism? Is nothing sacred or beyond the reach of political exploitation? Will ambulance chasing on abortion, the 2003 smear campaign and other facile exercises, change the PN’s political destiny?

More than an additional safeguard on abortion, which the vast majority can easily approve, is this not an abortion of democratic principles? Once it is seen to do absolutely nothing tangible to address the issue, is this not an extravagant exercise in demonising the silent minority, the 15 per cent of don’t knows, don’t cares and pro-abortion? Do they or do they not have a right to have an opinion also in a country where it will never lead anywhere? Does not this exercise of self-righteousness for political purposes, oppress and depress them gratuitously? Are they not anonymously demonised in an orgy of political hypocrisy, which leaves the door wide open for abortion a la maltese to carry on undisturbed?

I do not agree with them and, having tried to understand their arguments, I have remained firmly pro-life. It is my right as it is theirs to contradict me. Still my liberal soul is outraged by the inevitable witch-hunt. Where is our intelligentsia? Will none of the pro-life intellectuals not feel for their adversaries on this issue? Do they too feel the pressure to keep silent? Does the country not possess a single anti-abortion intellectual capable of speaking out against the abuse of this issue for political purposes? The demonisation of a very small minority by default, as political collateral damage? Do we have an intelligentsia? Can anything that safeguards its career and pension prospects before its right to free speech deserve the name? The prohibition of abortion is more than safe among us and we all know it. How about the defence of minorities, even demonised minorities?

Is the country not possessed of a single playwright endowed with a single metaphorical testicle? Could any such person fail to recognise in the present situation a plot so surreal that it would make Franz Kafka itch to return among the living? Are we culturally dead to be so politically supine? Hypocrisy robed in sacred vestments solicits the votes of the devout: Is Malta the world’s only mediaeval democracy, an extraordinary contradiction in terms? In the third millennium is the Holy Inquisition re-exhumed, not to defend the faith but to solicit votes? Will we believe more because the Constitution tells us to? Do we have a right to object to the prostitution of our religion for partisan purposes? Its misappropriation by a cynical minority?

Do we not have a single lawyer capable of defending the Constitution against its demotion to criminal code? What use are they if they dare not speak out? Do they not experience the insult of Dr Tonio Borg’s televised invitation to band clubs, butchers, bakers and candlestick makers to make submissions on the proposal to amend the constitution?

Do we all have off-the-shelf moralities? All off-the-shelf-politics? Or is it that we are all so jaded that we consider the outrage expressed at hall-of-mirrors politics a measure of one’s naivety? Have we all acclimatised perfectly to the background hypocrisy? Are we all quite comfortable that the official version of things has nothing to do with what actually happens here? Is this just small island syndrome or terminal apathy? Have we already aborted our intelligence and our self-respect? Do we realize that this political gimmick has nothing to do with abortion?

I will be nowhere near Parliament when this mess is discussed. Thank God for that. The spectacle of the PN and MLP mutually checkmated by electorally driven, false piety to produce a legal bastard while pretending to prevent abortion would be too much to bear, even for me who has held them in contempt for ages.

Dr Vassallo is Chairperson of

Alternattiva Demokratika –

The Green Party

[email protected]