There are some things in life that just won’t go away. Taxes, utility bills, tourism ministers, that annoying little stain on my kitchen floor... but while all of these are annoying to a lesser or greater degree, for sheer tenacity and persistence nothing quite beats the Gift of Life Foundation’s current anti-abortion campaign.

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Personally, I was under the impression that the issue had long been lain to rest, not least by an excellent article on the subject by a certain Alfred Sant in June 2005. Evidently, though, I was wrong.

For some months now, Gift of Life has been circulating e-mails in an attempt to collect signatures in favour of a constitutional amendment aimed at “protecting life from the moment of conception”.

Its website claims that the number of signatures collected to date is 11,300: not a terribly impressive figure, when you consider that a petition for an animal hospital managed to attract no fewer than 40,000 signatures, to no apparent avail.

But the real problem with Gift of Life’s petition is not the number of signatures; it is the fact that all 11,300, without exception, have been collected on entirely false pretences.

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Here are a few quotes from the e-mail currently doing the rounds: “Urgent appeal to ALL Maltese citizens EVERYWHERE who are against ABORTION”... “We need your help to protect Malta from legalised abortion in the future”... “Please pass on this petition to your ENTIRE mailbox today!”

Another e-mail, currently circulated under the subject field “SAVE MALTA FROM THIS HORROR”, presents a short film about abortion, observing that “Here is why Malta MUST protect itself from abortion by giving the unborn child the clear right to life through our Constitution.” (Note: all caps and bolds to be taken as “sic”)

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At this point, a brief reality check might be warranted. For doesn’t the sum total of all this hysteria strongly suggest that there might be some kind of IMMINENT DANGER that the HORROR OF ABORTION might be LEGALISED IN MALTA TOMORROW? Why is the appeal so “urgent”, if not because of the existence, implied in the above e-mail campaign, of a serious groundswell movement to introduce abortion in the coming years, months, weeks or even days?

In actual fact, however, there is nothing of the kind; and while I suspect that Gift Of Life knows this only too well, the same cannot be said for all the foreigners (my emphasis) who are consciously being targeted by what I can only describe as an utterly deceptive campaign.

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The reality is that the ruling Christian Democratic party (that’s the PN for all the locals reading this) is likelier to introduce low-cost flights to the Moon, than take any steps to legalise abortion on its own initiative. Over to the Opposition, and the Malta Labour Party has repeatedly made its pro-life views painstakingly clear – the most recent occasion being Anglu Farrugia, halo on head, solemnly declaring as much before the Monument to the Unknown Mother in Naxxar.

So much, then, for any chance that Parliament might ratify abortion in the foreseeable future.

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Outside Parliament, there is Alternattiva Demokratika: a party which is not only itself statutorily opposed to abortion (and is now suing anyone who dares to suggest otherwise), but also unsuccessfully tried to introduce an anti-abortion clause into the statute of the European Greens.

As things stand, then, the only thing resembling a pro-choice political movement in the entire country is the Alpha party, spearheaded by Emmy Bezzina and John Zammit. In the 2004 EP elections, they polled a total of 750 votes between them: not exactly what you would call an imminent threat to the country’s self-avowed pro-life stance.

(Incidentally, this is how Gift of Life refers to the local pro-choice lobby in its website: “In a recent visit by a foreign abortionist brought over by these individuals, free abortions were offered to Maltese women”... conveniently omitting to mention that these “free abortions” are actually being offered, not in Malta, but in Spain.)

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So the question remains: why all the urgency? Why the rush? And why the creation of a deliberately false impression that Malta is in any kind of danger of pro-abortion legislation introduced any time soon?

To be honest, I don’t know the answer. But the more I contemplate the question, the less I like the idea to begin with. Here are a few reasons why:

It is misogynistic

To be honest, this argument would probably sound a lot better coming from a woman. But I have neither the time nor the money for a sex-change operation, so you’re just going to have to hear it from me, XY chromosomes and all.

Has anyone out there bothered to actually read the section of the Maltese Criminal Code that deals with abortion? I have, and my immediate reaction was that it could only have been written by a man. And a particularly misogynistic man at that: you know, the type of man who tends to view women primarily in the context of their reproductive role as breeders, and then goes on to threaten them with prison, no less, for failing to live up to his entirely unreasonable expectations of total subservience to his will.

Admittedly, the threat remains somewhat farcical, considering that to date, no woman has (to the best of my knowledge) ever been imprisoned for terminating a pregnancy. But personally, I find the very existence of this threat distasteful. It offends my sensitivity. It wreaks havoc with my digestive system. Above all, it runs counter to my innate Mediterranean “Ara tmissli l-mara” machismo: a machismo which dictates to my pea-sized Mediterranean brain that men should really defend their women against injustice, and not perpetrate the injustice themselves.

If you ask me, the real reason why Malta’s ban on abortion remains such an utterly primitive piece of legislation is that it offers no respite whatsoever to women (still less indemnity to doctors) in cases when their lives may be at risk.

As things stand today, these cases present the medical profession with an apparently insoluble dilemma, in which doctors sometimes have to knowingly break the law in order to save a woman’s life.

Some doctors even raised the issue anonymously with The Malta Independent on Sunday, in an article by Juan Ameen published on 10 September. I have to add that Gift of Life’s response was, to say the least, bizarre: namely, a letter that seemed to suggest the journalist in question may have made the story up herself. (“The impression one gets is that either (the doctors) have informed your newspaper that they wish to remain anonymous, or that this was an opinion based on conjecture.” (Maltese doctors against protecting life from conception? TMIS 1 October)

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There are also instances, arguably more questionable from an ethical point of view, in which abortion cannot so easily be argued away as a “horror” or an “evil”. One example (but there are many others) involves anencephaly: an admittedly rare condition in which the foetus is formed without a brain.

Typically, an anencephalitic child will die within seven days of birth, often within a few hours. In many parts of the world, cases such as these are routinely aborted, if nothing else to spare the mother much unthinkable trauma.

In Malta, I am informed that not only is the woman forced to go through with the entire pregnancy and childbirth, but after the ordeal she is handed the newborn infant, so that it can die in its mother’s arms.

I imagine some people out there will defend this procedure on the grounds that it is somehow “natural”. Personally, though, I think it is nothing short of warped.

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There are other factors to take into consideration – after all, the issue is a good deal more complex than Gift of Life would have us all believe. One of the issues involves in vitro fertilisation, with the above-mentioned doctors also expressing concern that any such constitutional amendment will render the treatment de facto illegal.

At the end of the day, however, the crux of the matter is simple enough. The unborn child is already afforded more protection by Malta’s uncompromising laws than those of any other country in the world. To insist on even more protection is, by definition, extremism.