Hello, my name is Mary… I decided to write in your newspaper. You’re such a good chap.

I know you print many letters and I watch you constantly trying your utmost to make the newspaper as popular as possible.

Do you know and do your readers know that over 4,000 women get pregnant every year? Yes they do. I know, I watch them having their babies, I watch their baby when she blows out the candle on her first birthday, I watch her struggling to walk for the first time, I even watch the children playing in the school yard, reaching puberty, getting engaged and then getting married and having their own children…

My name is Mary… and I was not so lucky. My mummy aborted me when I was three months old. If only you knew the pain I felt inside when they were actually “killing me”. It was as if someone was pricking me with a pitch fork, plunging inside me, tearing me to shreds and then, in the final stage, I actually felt as though someone was cutting inside me with a saw.

I wanted to scream but I couldn’t, anyway nobody would have heard me. I wanted to cry but it would have been in vain. Nobody would have seen my tears. I see my mum from where I am you know. She’s got two other children and she seems quite happy, though I see her tossing and turning during the night.

Once in a while I see her shed a few tears as well when she watches her other children. I guess she’s thinking about me, I guess remorse has caught up with her.

My name is Mary… and I was the unlucky one. I really wish that women who abort their kids saw on the screen what actually happens to us before they decide to take action. I wish they would see the pain we go through, the helplessness that overcomes us, the fear when we see those horrible instruments being plunged into us over and over and over again.

I bet they would change their mind if they were to see what was going to happen to us before they decided to terminate our lives. I forgive my mummy, you know, and I know God forgave her too. The question is whether she will ever forgive herself.

I have compassion for my mum. She was in a state of panic. Dad had been on the dole for quite some time and she had two kids already; she just couldn’t handle a third child.

My name is Mary… and I was the unlucky one. I had the right to live like anybody else.

Nobody on earth had the right to terminate my life so cruelly. Why, I could have grown up and left an impact on the world. I could have been a famous singer, a famous musician or what else.

Oh I know, I could have studied medicine and maybe lent a helping hand in finding the cure for cancer. But these are fantasies of course, because I never had the chance to have a future.

Others decided it for me, what nobody realises is that I was a person the day I was conceived. My first ambience was in mummy’s womb.

It was even so cosy there until that terrible terrible pain. I hear that 90 per cent of persons in Malta are against abortion.

My name is Mary… and I was the unlucky one. I wish television stations all over Malta would show The Silent Scream, a graphic film on the reality of the abortion procedure as viewed through an expensive but brilliant special camera which is delicately inserted into a pregnant woman’s womb. Over and over again. Then they would see the hell we go through when the abortionist pocks, prods, pricks and then severs our tiny limbs.

Oh, the hell we go through. There are so many alternatives to abortion like adoption, special financial assistance, etc. Why do we have to die? Why couldn’t I have the chance to live like other babies?

My name is Mary… and I was the unlucky one. I do know about the psychological effects of abortion. I watch many mothers or would have been mothers from up here. They don’t really mean to be cruel.

We die because they panic; they cannot see a child disrupting their life especially if the circumstances are not so good like having no support, no husband, financial instability etc, but still I wish that in future when they think of aborting their child, they would watch The Silent Scream and see what happens at the end of the film.

I must go now because my mum is calling me, the only mother I will ever have.

Mary the Mother of Jesus who loves me as no other mother could. I was named after her.

My name is Mary… and I wish I could have lived but the decision was taken out of my hands.

Mummy I forgive you, and I will always love you.

Valerie Borg

Valletta