CJohn Zammit levels against me a charge of Argumentum ad Verecundiam on the issue of the respect due to unborn human life (TMIS, 11 September). This means, according to him, that I am using my authority as a physician to make pronouncements on issues that I am not really qualified in, thereby leading people to fallacious conclusions from the right side of the fence, so to speak. But is he concrete in making this charge? I have, over the past weeks, presented solid and referenced scientific and embryological arguments that human life starts from conception. Not just any doctor’s opinion but that of eminent embryologists and geneticists. I would refer to a gynaecologist for example for information on gynaecological issues, but not issues pertaining to physical human development! An embryologist is a scientist who studies human development and is best placed to give us opinions on when this begins. I did not use my own authority as a physician but based it on that of eminent embryologists. He himself has failed to give me solid scientific proof against this evidence. He is thus building his arguments on his own beliefs and conjectures about human nature and not on empirical facts!

He berates me for drawing up the differences between a human ‘cell’ and a human ‘organism’ when in fact any human being comprises both but there is a big difference between the moral respect due to the terms. Having established content in the laws of nature, I then proceeded to use human reason to conclude that one ought to respect human life in whatever stage of development because all homo sapiens members, irrespective of levels of development or abilities, belong to a species where reason is natural, that is natural as a norm. That is I used natural law to proceed from primary principles of practical reasoning going on to a specific mode of responsibility compatible with a will leading to integral human fulfilment, and finally formulated a specific moral norm, not to do harm to innocent human beings, which norm is absolute in light of the principles that gave rise to it, these being to do good and avoid evil and to do to others as I expect them to do unto me. If he has problems with this ordered set of the practical reason I am using, he may like to take the matter up with John Finnis. This reasoning is also available to him as a human being and a person and to everyone else as it is part of his natural reason as a norm.

That he chooses to frivolously believe whatever he wishes in the light of the evidence presented merits eye-opening conclusions. He opines that the foetus or embryo is not mentioned in the Maltese Constitution and therefore there is no obligation for these to be endowed with citizen rights. However, this is a catch-22 or circular argument, because the framers of the constitution did not draw up any differences legally between human beings and human persons, and would have believed that both are the same thing and merit human respect for their life because of their own dignity. They would have obviously expressed these issues of positive law derived from a natural law precursor. If it comes to this, there is no mention of abortion anywhere in the Bible either. I doubt however if one can use this argument to state that the absolute obligation in the Decalogue ‘not to kill’ does not also apply to not yet nascent human life. We can all try to play the fool with each other but there is a level with the Absolute where the tomfoolery would have to stop. Mr. Zammit should try playing chess with God rather than me, in order to learn a few really good moves, or he may opt to do so with the devil but of course must use very long chess pieces or a very long pair of thongs to move his pieces with.

Article 32 of our Maltese Constitution states that our human rights end where the rights of others begin. If the Canadian Supreme Court interpreted the Canadian Constitution as it did in depriving unborn life of any rights, then I am afraid that the judges there had a very narrow interpretation of their own Constitution and the natural law principles from which it was derived. This ought not to mean that Maltese judges should have such a narrow outlook and they should take a few pages out of the thoughts of the eminent jurist Hadley Arkes who had written down his remarks on certain decisions of the American Supreme Court based on the natural law foundations of the American Constitution, including that on abortion. As a matter of fact, to show how narrow the interpretation of constitutions by judges and individuals can be, neither did explicit references in the American Bill of Rights to the fact that all man are born free with equal rights and dignity prevent the American State from allowing the practice of negro slavery in the land of the free! A high price in human life had to be paid to put an end to that anomaly of human dignity, which led to all that loss of life during the American civil war. Was Lincoln justified in acting the way he did to protect human dignity and the integrity of the State? What if a future American Supreme Court judgement had to overturn the previous judgement on abortion? What justification can be given for all the human lives lost in between then? The fact remains that we have established human rights based on inviolable human dignity of the human being and the moment that some other human being starts trying to re-define the physical points where the human dignity of other human beings should or should not be respected, a line is crossed that renders the whole concept of human dignity as a relative rather than absolute concept and therefore spurious.

I will end with a quotation from the eminent German philosopher Robert Spaemann to highlight my point. “And the human being, as representation of the undetermined (as an end-in-himself), as well as her human dignity, are completely independent of any ‘function’. Admittedly this dignity is based on the character of the human being as a person. Yet the independence of the person hinges on the fact that no one is allowed to decide whether or not another human being bears the fundamental features of personhood. Human rights depend on the fact that no one is authorized to define the circle of those who are entitled to them and those who are not. Hence these rights, though rooted in our personhood, must nevertheless be granted to each being born of woman, and this from the first moment of his purely natural existence, it being unnecessary to superimpose additional qualitative criteria”.

If after this Mr. Zammit still thinks that the basis of my arguments are built on my personal belief rather than objective fact, then it might be advisable for him to stick to reading Joseph Heller’s novel and see if he can use it to help him in his future deliberations! The fact remains that a doctor treating a pregnant human mother or practising IVF has more than one human being under his care and he has no right to choose the intrinsic value of one of these lives over that of the others but is obliged to respect all human life equally.

Michael Asciak MD

BIRKIRKARA