I find myself in the peculiar position of wishing to defend the Leader of the Opposition against the outrageous excesses of the self-proclaimed “chief executive officer” of the Gift of Life Movement. Paul Vincenti told reporters that he wants the government and the Opposition to get together and understand that people want assurance on the matter of abortion, especially from the Opposition. “Dr Sant still has not taken a position on this. Whether you’re in favour or against, discuss it in Parliament. By not taking a position, you are upsetting people and creating a lot of uncertainty,” he said. “For the sake of the unborn child, take a public stand on this. Why have you not taken a decision? Do we need to keep asking why?”

Oh, for heaven’s sake, quit the hysterics. Who are these people who are so upset about the failure of Parliament to discuss what Paul Vincenti wants them to discuss? I have yet to meet one. He’s busy panic-mongering among Sliema-type women – don’t take that as an insult; I’m one myself – about the urgency of his proposal to have the ban on abortion written into the Constitution, giving them to understand that Parliament has dark plans for some abortion legislation. Meanwhile, hundreds if not thousands of Maltese women are having their abortions in Sicily and London, indifferent to Paul Vincenti and his relentless campaigning. Maybe his next suggestion will be to give all Maltese women of childbearing age a pregnancy test on the way out of the country and another one when we get back in. That would be about as preposterous as his current suggestion to slot abortion into the Constitution, as though it’s any of our business what our descendants choose to do with their lives and their parliamentary vote.

Paul Vincenti seems to suffer from that unfortunate delusion that makes some people believe their personal agenda is of crucial national importance. He woke up one day with a bee in his bonnet about slipping abortion into the Constitution, so the entire country has to dance to his tune. His words to journalists were a transparent attempt at cornering the Leader of the Opposition into prancing along with the rest of the sorry fools who have fallen under his spell. He tried the same trick with Harry Vassallo of Alternattiva Demokratika. If you don’t sign Paul Vincenti’s wrong-headed petition, then you’re a baby-killer. That’s false logic, but many people have fallen prey to it because rational thinking isn’t taught in schools and is rarely learned in the course of life.

***

What I want to know is not what Sant thinks about abortion; I would imagine that it is pretty much the same as what I think – that abortion is a hugely complex moral issue which cannot be simplified by the starkness of good versus evil. I also rather suspect that, unlike so many Maltese men who see women as objects to be talked down to, patronised and bossed about, he would regard the control of pregnant women by middle-aged and elderly men with absolute distaste – again, pretty much as I do. As a friend once remarked to me sarcastically, while we listened to television reports of a bunch of men in their 40s and 50s telling a rally in St Julian’s why women shouldn’t be allowed to have abortions, if men got pregnant, abortion wouldn’t be a moral issue, it would be a human right.

An absolute ban on abortion brings with it as many great horrors as the legalisation of abortion does; there is simply no straightforward way out of the dilemma. We don’t have those horrors here because our ban on abortion is of the theoretical kind, the kind that allows us to play games of let’s pretend that Maltese women don’t have abortions. In reality, thousands of Maltese women have had abortions over the years because they have superb access to abortion clinics, better access than women living in many other parts of Europe. The nearest clinics are a short, cheap flight or catamaran ride away, precisely the sort of distance that women living in large countries must travel to the nearest city if they live in rural areas.

Rebecca Gomperts wondered aloud at her public meeting why Maltese women are not campaigning for abortion. Those whom God has anointed with his heavenly hands, and who persist in the delusion that Maltese society is different to all others, told her that it’s because the morals of Maltese women are of the superior kind. We are above such things. If the Jews hadn’t got there first, we would have put in a claim as God’s chosen people. They are naïve and deluded, but they can’t kid themselves forever. The truth is that Maltese women have things sorted smoothly, as Maltese women tend to do: if they want an abortion they can easily have one up the road in Catania, but at the same time they are able to salve their consciences by fighting against abortion in Malta. This is an extremely convenient situation: a ban on abortion within our borders, giving us brownie points with God, but none of the problems associated with a ban on abortion, as women can still have all the abortions they want to. If the nearest abortion clinic were a Lm700 flight away from Malta, or a thousand-mile hike across a desert, you can rest assured that the story would be very different. There wouldn’t be quite as much moralising then.

***

For a woman, Maltese or not, to be against abortion and then to have one herself is not a paradox. As Rebecca Gomperts tried so unsuccessfully to explain to her hostile audience of misguided crusaders, who turned up to heckle and insult her when they never did the same to the unspeakable racists who are the real threat to life, many women who are against abortion end up having one themselves. They justify and rationalise their decision by saying that their case is “different”. You must have a very poor understanding of human nature to be unable to see that this is entirely normal. That’s why no woman can say with certainty that she will never have an abortion, however much she disagrees with abortion in principle.

In its silly surveys, Gift of Life should not be asking women whether they are against abortion, but whether they would have one. While the reflex answer to the question “are you against abortion?” is “yes” , all but the most unwise will pause before answering the question “would you ever have an abortion?”. The truly wise will answer that they cannot possibly know what they will do in a situation they have not yet experienced. This is why older women are often so much more tolerant and open-minded than younger ones. They have experienced more, and it’s given them a better understanding of human nature and more compassion too. Young women tend to be dogmatic, intolerant and super-conservative.

***

An important question remains. How has Paul Vincenti materialised out of nowhere to become such a public nuisance? He has bullied – no doubt he will describe it as persuaded – many thousands of people into signing his dubious petition. At first he seemed to have the Justice Minister wrapped around his little finger and campaigning with him by writing to the floral club and the karate association to support his contentious ambitions. Now the Justice Minister has stepped back, at least in public, and all you see is Vincenti, with his American sales talk and gestures. He reminds me of Alfred Sant in the run-up to the 1996 election. Checking out his website at www.pvmalta.com, I wasn’t in the least bit surprised to find that he runs courses in selling and in telesales, telesales people being among the most annoying on the planet, interrupting one’s day with their persistent sales spiel, like terriers hanging onto a priest’s cassock and refusing to let go.

I got some of that Gift of Life telesales spiel about a year ago, when Paul Vincenti decided to ring me at work and talk me into converting to his cause, after I wrote that Gift of Life has no business inserting its view of morality into the country’s Constitution. I couldn’t get him off the phone, and I couldn’t get a word in. If even I, with such a strong personality, couldn’t get him to stop battering me with his telesales talk, then I am not surprised at how whole troupes of women succumb at once and sign the petition he touts at card-parties and coffee-mornings. At one point I hung the receiver over my shoulder and sorted through the papers on my desk while his “how can I persuade you” sales pitch droned down my spine.

When I finished sorting those papers, I picked up the receiver again and found he was still going on about the beauty of childbirth, invading his wife’s privacy by describing to me in great detail her pregnancy and delivery. I reminded him that I had given birth three times, would remember it in great detail for the rest of my life, and did not need descriptions of the process from somebody who would never experience it himself. I couldn’t believe that groups of women who have given birth actually sit there and listen to this man describe to them an experience they have had and which he hasn’t. His self-assurance is extra-planetary. Then I told him that I would much rather a woman took the morning-after pill 24 hours after having sex, than force her to give birth to a child who will be neglected and abused for the next 18 years or dumped with the nuns. A child suffers like hell but a fertilised egg doesn’t know what’s going on. I also told him that if he compares the inducement of a miscarriage at one week’s pregnancy to the abuse and murder of a five-year-old child, then he knows nothing about five-year-old children and even less about morality. This isn’t only a debate about the ending of life; it’s also a debate about causing suffering to others. I only have O-level standard biology, but even I can work out that a fertilised egg can’t suffer in the same way that a foetus can six months into term.

The persuasive sales talk suddenly switched to mean and nasty, then to threats (“I’ll sue you for libel!” “Join the queue of freaks, then, but be prepared to wait because it’s a long one,” I said), insults (“I’ve asked advice about suing you, and my lawyer said ignore her, because everyone does.” “Oh yes, sure, that’s why you’re so bothered about what I write about you and your plans for our Constitution.”), and then accusations of a hidden agenda. Yes, I said, I import the morning-after pill as a sideline, what do you think? I’m checking the stocks as we speak.

I asked him to free my telephone line, but when he refused to ring off – perhaps that’s all part of the telesales training – I told him that middle-aged men with obsessions about abortion and the wombs of women other than their wives or girlfriends strike me as being deeply creepy, and rang off myself. My editor then told me that he was on the phone to him, doing and saying roughly the same thing. Maybe he should stand for election with the Labour Party, whose officials seem to like ringing journalists and editors to shout at them. What a truly exhausting and domineering man – really, his poor wife.

***

The treatment of Rebecca Gomperts in the Maltese media and by the Gift of Life is a fascinating, textbook case of how an exercise in vilifying a woman because of her beliefs and behaviour begins with portraying her as an unfeminine and ugly witch. When she finally got here, people were surprised to see that she is youngish and attractive, or as one reporter put it, “disarmingly girlish”. I go through the same thing myself. Letters objecting to my columns and my opinions are long on insults about my appearance and perceived lack of femininity and short on rational argument (“Why doesn’t she look in the mirror?” – oh, grow up and get out of the schoolyard). One letter published a couple of weeks ago accused me of the serious crime of not having breasts, which rather suggests that the man in question has never met me.

I have been portrayed as some kind of hideous witch for so long and so often that when people meet me for the first time they can’t hide their surprise that I am really quite easy on the eye. The other day at a party, a friend’s new girlfriend goggled openly when introduced. “I didn’t know that Daphne Caruana Galizia is so tall,” she blurted out, before she could stop herself. The propaganda had led her to expect something small and stick-like. Some weeks ago, walking into the courts for a libel case filed by a nasty little racist – one of many – I overheard a conversation between two court employees. “Ara, dik Daphne.” “Le, ma’ jistghax ikun, ghax jghidu li hi kera hafna, u dik mara sabiha.” (“Look, that’s Daphne.” “No, it can’t be because they say she is very ugly, and that is a lovely woman.”) I burst out laughing, and they were overcome with embarrassment. I didn’t think I was looking particularly good that day, but I was amused to see yet more evidence of this tactic as old as time: if you want to run a woman down, first portray her as ugly and like Lady Macbeth, unsex her. Whole treatises have been written about the subject. So, I hate to disappoint those of you who have never met me, but I am not a short and ugly witch with the figure of a man and serious personality problems, so you’ll just have to think of some rational arguments to use against me instead. Alternatively, you could always get a life.

There’s more about this subject in my column of last Thursday (www.independent.com.mt)