From Mr P. Vincenti
In recent months, following the controversial and very unpopular visit to Malta by Dr Rebecca Gomperts of the abortion ship Women on Waves, there have been a very few yet disproportionately loud voices in Malta that have argued against allowing the drive to extend the right to life to the unborn child because, as they claim – without offering a shred of tangible evidence to back their stance – the unborn are not yet “persons” and thus they should not have any legal rights.
Interestingly, the premise that only people are allowed rights is now being seriously challenged partly due to the relentless effort carried out by the global animal rights campaign to promote better animal protection. Of course, it is perfectly acceptable that animals should be adequately protected by strong enforceable laws, however what is currently being proposed in Spain is now clearly pushing the boundaries well beyond the realms of belief.
As the world grapples with the irrational concepts of relativism and individualism and as a result, the unborn child and humanity continue to lose the battle for the right to life, Spanish politicians are seriously considering giving apes clear legal constitutional rights. Proposed measures would stop the animals from being used for experiments, filming, television advertising and circus performance with legal rights and not just by simple laws. One should be careful here to distinguish between the correctness of protecting animals, with which most of us agree, and the mechanism being used to achieve this objective in Spain.
John Smeaton of SPUC, the UK based Society for the Protection of Unborn Children, spelt out the implications of what the Spanish are proposing to do when he said: “This runs contrary to the widely-held beliefs that animals are not persons and that only persons are capable of possessing rights. Indeed, permission for abortion, embryo experimentation and (in certain cases) euthanasia is often predicated on the erroneous belief that unborn children and the severely mentally incapacitated are not persons”.
Not surprisingly, the Spanish pro-abort movement, that vigorously fought so hard against the right to life from conception on the basis that rights could only be given to persons that were either born or viable, has conveniently exited the debate, content at having presumably reached their goal for legalised abortion by abusing this very argument for personhood. It should not surprise anyone that few in Malta have used this banal argument against the unborn child.
Faced with such distorted moral reasoning, one is forced to contemplate what the future may hold for humanity. This is especially relevant to all of us, when mankind would consider taking such unprecedented steps to stoop so low as to reduce his very special position in the natural order of things and so readily elevate the nature of animals armed with new rights up to a comparable level of human nature. For a prelude of what more is to come, one only needs to look at yet another of the 27 EU countries, Belgium, which, after over 30 years of legal abortion, has now reached the stage where its parliament is currently deliberating extending Belgian laws to permit the legal euthanasia of children up to six months after birth for deformity or serious illness and to any person suffering from dementia.
What we are witnessing is an accelerated degradation of the very foundations of human dignity, apparently met by little resistance and much voter apathy in Europe. To a degree, we are all affected by these serious issues and we would be perfectly justified to be very concerned, given that our Maltese politicians still have to take a clearer stand and act assertively on the matter of extending the clear constitutional right to life to the unborn child. Leaving the unborn child unprotected in this way is, quite simply, a blatant act of irresponsible discrimination against a weaker segment of society and must be addressed urgently.
Paul Vincenti
Gift of Life