It is a universally accepted scientific truth that human life begins at conception. The absolute protection of human life from conception is paramount if we are to learn from the errors of other countries and preserve the good of the family and subsequently, that of Maltese society.

Malta is still a pro-life nation honouring human life in all its stages, right up to old age. We must work hard to keep this heritage as it is under relentless assault from internal as well as external forces.

We are human by nature and not by function. Yet the more philosophical opponents of the pro-life position often object to such straightforward statements. They argue that the unborn are not people because they cannot function in the same way we do. They claim that a true “person” must meet certain criteria; he or she has feelings, self-awareness, consciousness, and the ability to feel pain, the ability to interact with his or her environment.

This distorted reasoning is craftily designed to mislead. This argument suggests that since the unborn or the born for that matter, may have few or even none of these, they cannot therefore be persons and need not be protected from destruction. The reader should note that those who use these forms of arguments take their criteria for personhood as “givens”, without any attempt to explain why one should accept these.

This reasoning is termed in what is known as functionalism and it has several serious flaws. Hence it cannot be relied on as a sustainable argument for the destruction of human life. It is quite possible for a human not to be able to function fully as a person yet still be considered a person when unconscious for example; they certainly would not be able to feel any pain or emotions yet we still consider them to be persons. I read a story about a five-year-old girl named Gabby Gingras. Gabby is in an interesting predicament: she was born with a disorder that prevents her from feeling any physical sensations like pain. Her disorder is called Hereditary Sensory and Autonomic Neuropathy type-4.

Gabby wandered around for quite a while with a broken jaw once but nobody doubts she is a person.

Some argue that one’s right to life lies in the intellectual capacity of a person. This opinion is loaded with obvious discriminatory implications. It implies that someone with above average intelligence should be considered more of a valuable being. Attempts in history to discriminate against other persons in this way were eventually met with fierce resistance for obvious reasons. One need only remember another class of people like the Jews and the end many of them met in the Second World War. If we depict the development of mental capacity as an “intelligence learning curve” starting at conception, showing an increasing level of intelligence ability that would reach its peak presumably in a person’s middle age, gradually decreasing in older age with the decay of mental function and a natural death. Would it then not be only natural to argue in favour of not only abortion but also euthanasia?

If I accept the philosophical given that I did not exist until my birth, then in what way was that birth even really mine? “The only way for ‘my birth’ to be more than a linguistic convention is to admit that ‘I’ existed before I was born.”

Pro-life advocate Scott Klusendorf summarizes these arguments better than perhaps I can. He said:

“Scientifically, the (pre)born come from human parents who, according to the law of biogenesis, can only produce human offspring. Philosophically, the differences between foetus and newborn are differences of function, not essence (or nature). The unborn human retains its identity as a person through time and change because it possesses a human nature.”

Paul Vincenti

Gift of Life Foundation