Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1522634
maltatoday | SUNDAY • 16 JUNE 2024 8 OPINION Unborn children deserve compassion WHEN the results of the European Par- liament elections were announced on 10 June with the ruling Labour Party in Malta seeing its 42,000 majority in the last gener- al election in 2022 slashed to 8,400, Prime Minister Robert Abela called for a "dose of realism" in government decision-making. He said: "The time has come for govern- ment to make decisions that shouldn't have been postponed in the first place." Then he spoke of women's rights as a subject that was postponed, in a nod to his government's U-turn on the abortion law amendment last year. Four years ago, when Abela took over as prime minister from Jo- seph Muscat he had declared, emphatically, that if the latter were to ever start promot- ing abortion he would find Abela oppos- ing him. Is Abela about to make another U-turn? The Prenatal Alliance of Norway is an organisation that advocates for the rights and well-being of unborn children. It prior- itises the prenatal parenting of babies prior to conception, at conception, during preg- nancy and birth. It has a very strong team of prenatal experts from Norway, Canada, Brazil, USA, India, Japan, Turkey and Chi- na. The experts define an unborn baby as a human being at any stage of development from conception until birth. They hold that the unborn baby is a conscious and sen- tient being who reacts, responds, learns and thrives when surrounded by love and har- mony, nurtured by his/her mother, espe- cially when she is supported by the father, family and society at large. It also emphasises that women need to feel safe and respected during the time they are forming and welcoming a baby into this world. The unborn child is the beginning of man. Dignity is attributable to man by virtue of his inherent worth. It is the essence of his humanity, a quality that transcends mere existence and encompasses his capacity for rational thought, moral agency, and emo- tional depth. This intrinsic dignity grants every unborn child a sense of self-respect and demands recognition and respect from others. Human dignity entails the recognition of the unborn child's basic rights that safe- guard them from exploitation and injustice. These rights encompass the right to life and security, as well as the right to equality and non-discrimination. Abortion discrimi- nates grossly against the unborn child. During a session with journalists held to mark the 20 years since the EU's largest enlargement in 2004 Charles Michel, the President of the European Council said: "Yes, we are determined… for the Euro- pean Council, it's a condition. Rule of law is the foundation, checks and balance are fundamental democratic values and hu- man dignity are who we are." Yet strange- ly a big majority in the last EU parliament lately voted to recommend that the right to abortion be entrenched in the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights. The degradation process of man in the concentration camp in Auschwitz during World War II typically began when the prisoners were robbed of their individuali- ty. The Secret Service only referred to them by their tattooed numbers. The Germans essentially turned the prisoners into slaves and, as such, they were socially dead beings. The Nazis found it easier to exterminate millions of people in the gas chambers once they looked and acted like sub humans. Ironically, barely 30 years after the end of the Second World War in many parts of the world started the lawful degradation of unborn children by surgical abortions. To- ny Levatino, a US obstetrician who turned pro-life after performing many abortions, describes the process used. "Picture yourself reaching in the uterus with the Sopher clamp and grasping an- ything you can. Squeeze on the clamp to set the jaws and pull hard. Out pops a ful- ly formed leg about 5 inches long. Set the jaw and pull really hard once again and out pops an arm about the same length. Reach in again with that clamp and tear out the spine, intestines, heart and lungs. "The toughest part of a dilation and evacu- ation abortion is extracting the baby's head. The head of a baby that age is about the size of a large plum and is now free floating in- side the uterine cavity. You will know you have it right when you crush down on the clamp and see white gelatinous material coming through the cervix. That was the baby's brains. You can then extract the skull pieces. Many times, a little face will come out and stare back at you." The degradation process of the unborn child by a medical abortion through the use of the drug mifepristone by the mother in her home works by blocking the hormone progesterone, which is necessary for main- taining a pregnancy. Without progester- one, the lining of the uterus breaks down, leading to the detachment of the embryo or foetus. This process effectively stops the pregnan- cy from progressing. The drug effectively turns the womb into a death chamber. The other drug misoprostol expels the dead ba- by out of the womb. On 4 February this year, during pro-life- day celebrations by the Malta Unborn Child Platform at St John's Cathedral in Valletta, keynote speaker Dr Charles Pace, senior lecturer at the Faculty of So- cial Wellbeing of the University of Malta, asked: "Why is it that those who are in favour of abortion very often feel compas- sion for the mother and seem not to feel anything for the baby in the womb? Why do they say they are in favour of human rights but not in favour of the rights of the unborn child? Why do they say that it is a crime to kill human life but then deny the unborn child the same protection of the law? How is it that they preach inclusion and then exclude the most vulnerable? Why do they look down at those who deny climate change and they deny that during pregnancy there is an individual human being developing in front of them? Com- passion means mercy towards the needs of all, without exclusion." Some 75 million people died in World War II. According to the Guttmacher In- stitute, a research and policy organisation based in New York and Washington, about 73 million abortions per year are done worldwide. This massive slaughter of early human life should be unthinkable in any civilised society. The Prime Minister's "dose of realism", in the present hard circumstances very strangely seems to mean repeating the same mistakes, indiscriminately pandering to the mostly irrational demands of lob- bies of perceived great number of voters, to gain their votes. This is not politics. This is business. The place for business is not in government. The place for business is in the stock exchange. Tony Mifsud is co- ordinator of the Malta Unborn Child Platform Tony Mifsud Women need to feel safe and respected during the time they are forming and welcoming a baby into this world