From Mr R. Vassallo

Ivan Padovani (The deception of the pro-abortion concept, TMIS, 29 October) evidently has nothing to add to the main thrust of my article two weeks ago, i.e., that Gift Of Life’s current campaign is built entirely on the false premise that Malta is in imminent danger of abortion being legalised by Parliament, something that is patently untrue.

Instead, he simply resorts to the same old tiring and unimaginative stratagem, which has characterised Gift of Life’s dishonest campaign from the outset – that anyone who dares to disagree with this mad scramble to change the Constitution is somehow “pro-abortion”.

As for his observation that “hard cases make for bad law”, well, I think even a 10-year-old child would point out the obvious flaw in that argument. For the converse is also true. Bad laws make for hard cases, and Malta’s abortion law is more than just bad, it is rotten.

It is rotten because it does not make allowances for cases in which the mother’s life is in danger, making Malta the most misogynistic country in the world (a privilege it shares with Chile). It is rotten because it offers no indemnity to doctors, and also because it fails utterly to reflect any of the social realities that surround what is, after all, an intensely complex issue.

But above all, Malta’s abortion law is rotten because its only purpose is to create the cosmetic impression that abortion is somehow banned, while doing absolutely nothing in practice to actually protect the life of the unborn child. In fact, the existence of an abortion racket at St Luke’s Hospital (Lm50 a pop, under circumstances likened on the programme to “a butcher’s shop”) was revealed on Xarabank last May in the presence of Gift of Life’s CEO Paul Vincenti. Incredibly, the man on a mission to rid the world of abortion did not bat an eyelid at this revelation. Perhaps he was too busy with his crusade for a constitutional amendment that will not change the current status quo one tiny bit.

It doesn’t surprise me, then, that Gift of Life should be so enamoured of Malta’s fake, cosmetic “ban” on abortion. After all, the only foetuses these people seem to really care about are the fake, little plastic ones they themselves hand out at their gimmicky media events.

Raphael Vassallo

TA’ XBIEX