After labouring through Michael Asciak’s rebuttal letter “A bloody mess” (TMIS, 21August 21), rich in highfalutin terminology and replete with name-dropping, I am left with a nagging question: What gives Dr Asciak his authority over his peers? Certainly not our Constitution, so much so that zealots like the Gift of Life want to enshrine, in that august document, the concept of the embryo as a human being from conception. (I say, “our” because I too am a citizen of Malta.)

Like Gift of Life, Dr Asciak is hell-bent on imposing his values on his peers and the rest of us. He seems immune to the reality that for every Michael Asciak there is at least one equally qualified embryologist with a diametrically opposite view. Are the dissenters all murderers of little children? As we say in Maltese, “Ħallina ngħixu, Dott!” (“Live and let live, Doc!”)

I am much too old to be dragged into a philosophical debate the like of which I experienced in Canada during the debate about the validity of the abortion law (struck down by the Supreme Court on the grounds of being unconstitutional − something which will be repeated in Malta in the near future). But I will answer Dr Asciak’s parting shot, absurd that it is, aimed at shaming me into submitting to his views.

He asks, “Would Mr Zammit have liked to have had his unique human organismic life terminated when he was just a five-day old embryo?”

This type of question, quite popular with the anti-abortionists, is known as a sophistical catch − a “No” answer will get the retort of, “Then why do approve of abortion?”; a “Yes” will get a derisive “He is nuts”, or some such answer.

My answer takes me back to when I was a toddler, when I was about three years old. Even in my twilight years, my memory is still fresh; recalling the joy of seeing my father come home ... a tall man who never missed lifting me up onto his shoulders to have a majestic view of my ‘world’.

I have no recollection of anything prior to those happy days, and definitely have absolutely no idea of what went on in my mother’s womb. My feeling is that this is the same experience that everyone, without exception, goes through in some form or other.

For a definitive answer, we need to go back in time. And we cannot do that. Or ask an embryo. Next question.

One last thought; if I may so, the male sperm is, too, a “unique human organismic life”. Do we imprison those who produce it for recreational purposes?

CJohn Zammit

FORT ERIE

CANADA