Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1243341
11 maltatoday | SUNDAY • 3 MAY 2020 OPINION forcing women to go abroad or having an abortion under ob- scure, insecure conditions." I need hardly add that all these concerns, and many more besides, have also been repeat- edly expressed by members of the local scientific community, too. For instance: in its posi- tion paper on abortion, 'Doc- tors For Choice Malta' listed out a whole series of ways in which current our abortion laws openly defy world scien- tific opinion. Among other things, they ar- gue that: "The complete ban on abortion is a risk to women's lives"; "The abortion ban in Malta does not stop abortions, it only makes them less safe"; "the abortion ban hampers women from seeking timely medical help and being hon- est with their doctors"… and that "Due to the lack of abor- tion services, Malta's medical authorities are falling short of best practice and the highest standards recommended by international guidelines which are based on evidence-based medicine." More to the point: unlike the blanket 'No' Dr Fearne gave in that interview… all their scien- tific arguments are supported by research and studies pub- lished by WHO, the Interna- tional Federation of Gynaecol- ogy and Obstetrics (FIGO), the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG), and the Royal College of Gen- eral Practitioners (RCGP). Can Dr Fearne say the same for his own arguments? No, wait, he didn't actually come up with any… so let me re- phrase that. Can our Health Minister pro- vide any form of scientific jus- tification, of any kind whatso- ever, for retaining Malta's total ban on abortion, in all circum- stances? Of course not. When it came to formulating a national health policy on abortion, Fearne's government – like all others before it – decided to simply ignore all scientific evidence, in favour of an approach that is clearly tailored to satisfy popu- lar opinion, for equally obvious electoral reasons. (For let's face it: any politician who openly agrees with any of the above ar- guments, would also be signing his own political death certifi- cate. Sad, but true.) As a result, our national approach to abortion is not merely 'unscientific'… but 'an- ti-scientific', in the most liter- al sense imaginable. Not only does it disregard all the advice and expertise of every relevant scientific body or institution in the world… but it also deliber- ately and provocatively contra- dicts it at every turn. And much as I hate to say it: this makes our abortion ban no less dangerous or unhinged (or even idiotic, for that matter) than Donald Trump's notori- ous recommendation to 'drink bleach' as an antidote to COV- ID-19. I mean that literally, by the way: after all, wasn't 'swallow- ing toxic substances' one of the methods identified by WHO as a form of 'unsafe abortion' in countries which ban the procedure in all forms? So, by preventing safe abortions from taking place here legal- ly, against the advice of world scientific opinion… what is our government actually doing, if not echoing precisely the same bizarre, idiotic approach ad- vocated by Donald Trump last week, to so much international scorn and derision? But hey! At least we got it right with COVID-19… and like I said earlier: that is no small achievement by any standard. Just imagine, then, how much more successful all our national policies would be, if they really were based on 'what science tells us'… Our total abortion ban is no less dangerous or unhinged (or even idiotic, for that matter) than Donald Trump's notorious recommendation to 'drink bleach' as an antidote to COVID-19