Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1487971
maltatoday | SUNDAY • 11 DECEMBER 2022 9 INTERVIEW enough. Let's move onto the bill itself. Critics (including several doctors) have argued that, by including pregnan- cies which threaten a wom- an's 'health' – as opposed to physical illness which directly threatens her life – this bill will 'open the door to abortion-on demand'. They object to the in- clusion of 'mental health'. Can you explain why these people are, in your own view, wrong? Let's start with this. In today's world, whoever tries to minimize the importance of 'mental health' - or to simply throw it aside, on the basis that 'it's not as impor- tant as physical health' – is doing a grave disservice to tens of thou- sands of patients, who are afflict- ed with mental health problems every day of their lives. Anyone who suffers from men- tal health problems – regardless of whether they are male, female, pregnant, not-pregnant, old, young, or whatever – needs med- ical care, just as much as anyone who suffers from any physical health condition. This week the Association of Maltese Psychia- trists issued two separate state- ments: both of which stated that 'there is no health, without mental health'. I agree with that, 100%. So whoever tries to divide healthcare into two separate cat- egories - 'mental health' on one side, and 'physical health' on the other – as if they were two com- pletely different things… those people are committing a grave mistake. Another thing the AMP said is that it is almost unheard-of – I won't say 'it never happens', for the simple reason that you can 'never say never'; but it is EXTREMELY rare - that a pregnancy would ever have to be terminated, because of a life-threatening risk caused by mental health conditions. So this idea that we're hearing: i.e., that, because we are 'not go- ing to exclude' people with mental health conditions, it's as though we're 'flinging the door wide open, to thousands of abortions each year'… what can I say? It's just another 'mistake' these peo- ple are making. And it's not just me saying this, as a politician: psychiatrists are saying this, too. Psychiatrists are, in fact, saying two very important things, which should serve to put people's minds at rest. One, that it is a grave mistake to (as the Op- position is doing) separate 'men- tal' from 'physical' health: a mis- take that would set back Malta's psychiatric healthcare, by literally decades… … and two, that it is extremely rare – almost to the point of being completely unheard-of – for any pregnancy to ever be terminat- ed, specifically because of mental health conditions. In other words, what Maltese psychiatrists are saying is: 'Don't worry. We don't get cases like this…' This raises the (purely Devil's advocate) question: if such cas- es are so entirely unheard-of, why even include 'mental health' at all? For the reason I already gave. You can 'never say never'. So even if it is extremely unlikely to ev- er happen… if a case does arise, where a pregnant woman's men- tal health is so severely threat- ened, that her pregnancy has to be terminated, to save her from serious harm… that case will not be left out, either. Let's turn to the political rami- fications. It seems that the La- bour government was slightly taken aback, by the sheer ex- tent of resistance (including internal) this amendment is facing. Apart from the sizea- ble turn-out at last Sunday's protest: the Prime Minister is already hinting at a possible 'tweaking' of the amendment itself (a sign, perhaps, that he is under more pressure, than he actually expected to be). Do you agree that the Labour Party has underestimated the strength of the pro-life lobby; and were you surprised by the (apparent) backlash? Well: I, for one, am certainly not 'surprised', that the Nationalist Party would jump onto a band- wagon, and try to frighten people by saying things which are totally untrue. Nor does it surprise me in the slightest, that the PN would once again be distorting the facts, for its own political reasons. Be- cause every time we ever intro- duced similar amendments, in the past: they've always accused us of trying to 'introduce abortion'. When we amended the IVF law to permit embryo-freezing; when we introduced PGT-M [pre-im- plantation genetic testing]… they always said exactly the same thing. But then, some time passes: and now, they almost want to take the credit for those amendments, themselves! Today, they almost claim that it was 'thanks to them', that embryo-freezing was intro- duced; or that the government only introduced PGT-M, because they insisted on it… So no, I'm not at all surprised that the PN is playing this card once more; and that, in so doing, it is only showing its true colours, as the extreme right-wing party it has become. There was a time, under previous leaders, when we were seeing certain changes tak- ing place; when [the Nationalists] seemed like they were finally be- ginning to understand, that to- day's society is not the 'society of 100 years ago'... …but with the leader it has to- day, the PN has gone all the way back to its roots. What Bernard Grech is effectively saying, is: 'This is what we were like, 100 years ago; and – no matter what anyone else says – this is how we are going to carry on being like, 100 years later…' Not only that; but the PN has become so extremist, that we even have someone who was a PN MP, until a few months ago – Edwin Vassallo – who is openly calling for a 'purge of the Nationalist Par- ty, from liberal ideas'. A 'purge', please note: in other words, a 'cleansing'. Now: my own message to all those people that Edwin Vassallo wants to see 'cleansed' from his own party, is… 'Come with us! We're a liberal party; and we have no problem whatsoever – on the contrary, we would be delighted to welcome you all on board: re- gardless whether you have voted PN, all your lives. For now that the PN doesn't want you any longer… Don't worry! Just join us, so that we can continue to grow!' At the same time, however, there must be several thousand pro-life Labour supporters, who are also 'confused' – not to say 'alarmed' or 'distressed' - by what they might interpret as a 'pro-choice stand' taken by their own party. Can you confirm that the PL is indeed receiving this sort of feedback from its own grassroots? And if so: what's your message to them? If there is any feedback of that kind: it hasn't reached my ears. But yes: thanks to the 'clumsy' ['goffa'] rhetoric that the Nation- alist Party has come up with… some people [within the Labour Party] may have been 'taken aback'. Not Labour politicians, so much – but people who hadn't re- ally understood, at the time, what we are trying to do. But the more people are begin- ning to understand – not just La- bour supporters, by the way: but all 'well-intentioned people' ['nies ta' rieda tajba'] – that the amend- ments we are proposing are really 'pro-life'; and that they are intend- ed to save the lives of mothers, where there is need… the more they will realize that everything the PN is saying, is really all just hype, and spin. And to be honest: we're not re- ally seeing that there is any such 'backlash', to begin with. The more time passes, the more peo- ple are understanding the truth of the situation; and the more they are supporting the amendment. The Labour Party has also been accused of 'politicising the is- sue', though: Prime Minister Abela himself arguably added fuel to the flames, by mention- ing the notorious 'Interdett' of the 1960s. Isn't there some po- litical mileage for the PL, too, in precipitating a 'culture war' over abortion? One thing is absolutely cer- tain: we are NOT proposing this amendment, for political reasons. And we have no political reasons to even do so, either. We have a majority of 40,000, from the last election; I personally got 13,000 votes – the most that anyone who wasn't a party leader, had ever got before – so I can assure you that neither my party, nor myself, are 'doing this for votes'. No: we are doing this, primari- ly because there's a need for it to be done; but also because… it's the right thing to do, quite frank- ly. We cannot leave women who find themselves in these situa- tions, to just fend for themselves. Yesterday, for instance, there was a report about a young woman who was diagnosed with a med- ical condition, whereby 'getting pregnant' would be fatal for her. This woman – who was named in the article – is 'condemned', to either have to go abroad [to get a life-saving abortion] if she ever gets pregnant… or to just never have sexual relations again, in her entire life. These are real situations, that really happen in our country. Can we just leave everything as it is? I say: no, we can't. No matter how many votes we lose… we cannot just pretend the problem doesn't exist and do nothing.