Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1484063
maltatoday | SUNDAY • 13 NOVEMBER 2022 OPINION 10 Raphael Vassallo OPINION Abortion, by any other name… IN a country which organises so many 'national awards cere- monies', for almost everything under the sun… how about cre- ating a whole new category, for 'the most blatantly self-contra- dictory statements of the year'? There'll be no shortage of con- tenders, you know. As of right now, I would place both Health Minister Chris Fearne, and Prime Minister Robert Abela, towards the very top of the table: because both have recently gone on record, saying the equivalent of… a) 'We will NOT decriminalise abortion, in any shape, manner or form', and; b) 'We WILL decriminalise abortion, but only in a number of (very restricted) circumstanc- es'. Hmm. Kind of difficult not to immediately such spot a glar- ing, 'in-your-face' contradiction, isn't it? I mean, that's almost right up there with the same government's promises that: a) "We will ensure that Mal- ta's communities get the 'green spaces' they deserve" (a pledge made in both the Labour Party's most recent electoral manifesto; and also in Clyde Caruana's last two Budgets, on the trot), and; a) "We will also ensure that the construction lobby continues developing every last square- inch, of all the 'green space' that is actually available on these is- lands… until there is effectively no 'green space' left to even pre- serve" (a promise that was nev- er made publicly, of course; but which seems to have been the whole point behind that 'secret, private business-lunch', organ- ised by Joseph Portelli for the Prime Minister on the eve of the last election…) But hey! Let's stick to only one contradiction at a time (other- wise, we'll be here till Christmas of 2056, at the very earliest). And if I choose to highlight the one about 'abortion', for now… it is partly because those two state- ments are not merely 'inconsist- ent' with each other… but also represent two completely anti- thetical – and mutually incom- patible – policy directions on the same issue. So let's take them in chronolog- ical order, shall we? Starting with Chris Fearne: who announced, on September 2, that his govern- ment would soon be tabling an amendment to Malta's abortion laws, following the Andrea Pru- dente case last summer. [Note: for further background details, I recommend this article: https:// www.maltatoday.com.mt/news/ n a t i o n a l / 1 1 7 5 0 8 / a f t e r _ m a l - tese_doctors_refusal_andrea_ prudentes_pregnancy_medi- cally_terminated_in_spain#. Y291mnbMKCh] Specifically, the Health Min- ister stated that: "While we will not be opening any doors to pregnancy termination, we will ensure that doctors can carry out their work and save lives without any fear of breaking the law…" What he didn't state, however, was that these amendments al- so foresee that: "when there are medical complications during a pregnancy and the mother's life is at risk, doctors can terminate a pregnancy to safeguard the mother's life without the risk of legal prosecution. Of course, the mother will also be protected from prosecution." Got that, folks? The govern- ment has just proposed legal changes to the Criminal Code, that would: 'open a door' per- mitting doctors to 'terminate pregnancies' (if only for health reasons); and also, remove all criminal sanctions for both doc- tors, and mothers, in such cases. Effectively, that adds up to a textbook definition of the term 'decriminalising abortion' [Note: I won't be repeating 'under cer- tain specific circumstances' every time; just take it as a given, from now on]. And what was it again, that Chris Fearne had so emphatically insisted that his government would NOT be do- ing, just literally a couple of sec- onds earlier? Why, 'decriminalising abor- tion', of course (which also just happens to be exactly what NGOs such as Doctors For Choice have been urging gov- ernment to do, for the past three years …) In case you're wondering, how- ever: that second quote came not from Chris Fearne himself, but from a more recent inter- view with Robert Abela, dated November 6 (i.e., last week). And just like Fearne before him, the Prime Minister also performed extraordinary feats of linguistic gymnastics, in his valiant efforts to make this con- tradiction appear less, um, 'con- tradictory' that it really is. Having only just told us that 'doctors [would be able to] ter- minate a pregnancy to safeguard the mother's life, without the risk of legal prosecution'… his answer to the next question ("So, this is a form of decriminalising abortion?") was… "Absolutely not. It has nothing to do with abortion…" Right: at this point, we have to seriously ask ourselves whether Chris Fearne and Robert Abela even know the meaning of the word 'abortion', to begin with. And I need hardly the ques- tion applies a good deal more to Fearne than to Abela; con- sidering that the former is both Malta's Health Minister – and therefore in charge of regulating the entire sector that ultimately has deal with such issues – and also, a medical doctor in his own right. In the end, it fell to Doctors For Choice to draw his attention to the inherent contradiction: "It should be clear to everyone, and especially doctors, that abortion means termination of pregnan- cy! There is no difference be- tween the two before a pregnan- cy is viable (at around 24 weeks). The treatment for ruptured membranes and sepsis before vi- ability is an abortion. The treat- ment for an ectopic pregnancy is an abortion. If you cannot get these abortions, you die…" Now: to be fair, there is room to argue that Robert Abela him- self may indeed have been una- ware of this definition, when he argued that 'abortion', and 'ter- mination of pregnancy', actually mean two different things. Chris Fearne, on the other hand, has absolutely no excuse to make such a fundamental mistake. He MUST know that the word abortion refers not just to the termination of unviable pregnancies such as Andrea Pru- dente's… but also, to 'spontane- ous abortions' of the kind that we more generally refer to as 'miscarriages'. (Otherwise, quite frankly, he would never have be- come a practising doctor in the first place.) Which of course leads me to believe that – in the health minister's case, at any rate – it WASN'T actually a mistake at all. Chris Fearne knows perfect- ly well that his government fully intends to 'decriminalise abor- tion', in certain restricted cir- cumstances; BUT… … he also knows perfectly well Health Minister Chris Fearne said, "While we will not be opening any doors to pregnancy termination, we will ensure that doctors can carry out their work and save lives without any fear of breaking the law…"