Keeping pregnant women under house arrest
Instead of looking at Ireland’s considerable abortion-related problems and telling ourselves that there, but for the grace of God and the barest modicum of commonsense, go we, there are people here who want to add to the problems we do have. And by this, I mean Paul Vincenti and Tony Mifsud of the lobby-groups Gift of Life and Malta Unborn Child Movement.
Last Thursday, in article called The Plastic Foetus Army is Back I wrote about Gift of Life’s return to the fray after the summer break, and how this time round, there is a backlash of anger and irritation where there wasn’t one before. Gift of Life has not succeeded in its objective, but it has unwittingly done something else: it has drawn out into the public sphere a wave of pro-choice opinion where previously there was silence. There are rivers of comments on the internet telling Gift of Life where to stuff its constitutional amendment and not to interfere in how others live their lives. There are even practising Catholics who say they are personally against abortion but would never dream of imposing their values on others. Gift of Life has done what it didn’t set out to do: the blanket view that abortion is wrong and that women should be forcibly stopped from having an abortion whatever the circumstances has been ruptured.
This is one of those watershed periods in social history when you can feel public opinion shift and change, never to return to what it was before. The political parties can’t have their finger on the pulse because they seem to be missing the shift. They are still talking about a divorce debate when society is ready and willing to accept divorce legislation, even demanding it. They are continuing to give fundamentalist groups like Gift of Life the time of day and the hope that their demands will be met even while the opposite sentiment is gelling on the internet, which keeps different spheres of Maltese society in touch with each other.
Only yesterday, Alternattiva Demokratika felt it necessary to issue a statement declaring that it is vehemently against abortion, always was, and always will be, and that abortion is not an issue in Malta “because all three parties are against it”. Alternattiva needs reminding that political parties are there to serve the electorate, and not the other way round, and that it is not up to the parties to decide what is and what isn’t an issue. The political parties shouldn’t be checking each other’s stance on abortion. They should be keeping their finger on the public pulse – and by that, I mean keeping their ear to the ground, and not polling blanket groups of citizens.
It is as though the summer break taken by Gift of Life has given enough time for commonsense to percolate through people’s minds, so that those who are posting hysterical – unfortunate choice of adjective, given that it comes from the Greek for womb – comments on the internet describing abortion as murder are in the minority. They are far outnumbered by those calling for toleration, for walking a mile in another woman’s shoes, and for greater understanding of the law, which distinguishes between murder and the induced termination of a pregnancy (for somebody to be murdered, he or she must have been born first).
There is a good deal of annoyance with those, among whom Mr Vincenti, who seek to argue – against all received wisdom and the accepted universal norms of the law – that birth means nothing, and that the status of a being remains seamless and unchanged between conception and death, irrespective of the fact that we have birth certificates, register births, have identification papers that give our birthdays, and mark the day we were born, and not the day we were conceived. How many of us know or even care about the day we were conceived? It’s a safe bet that not even our mothers know, and if they once did, they have long since forgotten.
If our parents tried to force this information on us, we would probably wince and raise a staying hand, saying: “Stop. Too much information.” The sexual act is an inescapable part of conception, and we would all prefer to believe that we were found under a cabbage or brought by a stork – anything, as long as it doesn’t involve having to make what most people consider to be a distasteful association between parents and sex. If I tried to tell my sons about the date of their conception – not that I know it – they would almost certainly make their excuses and quickly leave the room, and then I would overhear them discussing my mental health in loud whispers.
As far as we’re concerned, we began the day we were born, and we are happy to have it that way. Of course we know that we were conceived, and of course we know that we spent nine months in the womb, but it’s irrelevant. And culturally, it has always been irrelevant, which is why nobody, at least to my knowledge, has ever marked a conception day at any point in history.
But Paul Vincenti and Tony Mifsud are having none of that. If they don’t distinguish between a foetus in the womb and a toddler at playgroup, then the rest of us should follow their example and do the same, even if they are going to use the Constitution and resurrect the Inquisition. On 8 September, The Times carried a letter from Mr Mifsud, which attracted a storm of angry comments on the internet version of the newspaper. I could understand the anger, because his letter was truly appalling. Following the now defunct Irish example, he wants the government to introduce measures which prevent pregnant women from travelling out of Malta, if it is suspected they might have an abortion, and to place general restrictions on all movement out of the country by pregnant Maltese citizens. Yes, it’s terrible. The lack of regard for the rights of women, and the way we are talked about as though we are no more than animals, is beyond belief.
Even Ireland has amended its Constitution to ensure that the infamous Article 40.3.3, which Paul Vincenti and Tony Mifsud wish Malta to emulate, is not used to detain pregnant Irish women in Ireland. The amendment followed soon after the hideous 1992 episode known as Case X, in which a 14-year-old girl, who became pregnant after a neighbour raped her, was placed under police guard and physically prevented from leaving the country, when it became known that her parents planned to take her across the channel to England for an abortion. The police found out when the girl’s father asked them whether DNA from the foetus would be admissible as proof when the neighbour was charged with raping his daughter. Hearing that girl X was to be removed to England for an abortion, the Irish attorney-general sought an injunction under Article 40.3.3 of the Constitution, which did not discuss travel out of Ireland. The High Court ruled that allowing the girl to leave Ireland for an abortion would prejudice the foetus in terms of Article 40.3.3 and the police were sent in. The case made the international headlines and journalists flew in from all over the world.
Imprisoned in her own home by a battery of police guards and an army of journalists, traumatised girl X suffered a spontaneous abortion, otherwise known as a miscarriage, which some might see as an indication that God has ways of making his will known to those interfering busybodies on earth who claim to know his mind. Whichever way you look at it, the case of girl X draws parallels between fundamentalist Islamic thought and fundamentalist Catholic thought, and what happens when the strong arm of the state is roped in to ensure that we conform to what some imagine to be God’s will. Here was a 14-year-old girl, kept under house arrest by the police, to make sure that she incubates to full term, and against her will, the foetus fathered by the middle-aged neighbour who raped her, while her mother kept her on suicide watch and the trauma eventually brought on a miscarriage. Is that the Christian route? I doubt it. It’s like the contemporary version of something that might have happened in the 15th century.
Many lives have been ruined or derailed – children and their mothers, and sometimes even fathers when they are dragged into paternity in their teens – by forcing girls to give birth when they shouldn’t have been pregnant, but the fundamentalists can’t square this with their black-and-white notion of Christianity. They lack the imagination and the empathy to think and feel outside their blessed box.
Article 40.3.3 was added to the Irish Constitution in 1983. Until it was amended in 1992, it read: “The state acknowledges the right to life of the unborn and, with due regard to the equal right to life of the mother, guarantees in its laws to respect, and, as far as practicable, by its laws to defend and vindicate that right.” In late 1992, after the horror of Case X and three referendums which brought three amendments to the popular vote, this article was amended by the addition of the two qualifiers: “This subsection shall not limit freedom to travel between the State and another state. This subsection shall not limit freedom to obtain or make available in the State subject to such conditions as may be laid down by law, information relating to services lawfully available in another state.” A third amendment, to make abortion available in Ireland to suicidal mothers, was defeated.
In 2002, the Irish government put before the people The Twenty-Fifth Amendment of the Constitution (Protection of Human Life in Pregnancy Bill), which sought to add two articles – 40.3.4 and 40.3.5 – to the Constitution. These would have placed further restrictions on pregnant women. There was a turn-out of 42.89% for the referendum, and 50.42% voted No. Since then, the Labour Party has issued its policy position on abortion through the Wrynn Report. The 20th anniversary of the referendum which resulted in a Yes vote for the addition of Article 40.3.3 to the Constitution was marked, in 2003, by the formation of the Alliance for Choice, a broad coalition calling for its repeal from the Constitution.
So to cut it short, what Paul Vincenti’s Gift of Life wants Malta to do is what Ireland did 25 years ago when it added Article 40.3.3 to the Constitution after a Yes vote in a referendum. The only difference is that Gift of Life wants parliament to add exactly the same article to Malta’s Constitution without first referring the matter to the people, as our system permits. Gift of Life has also failed to bring to the attention of people in Malta the fact that it is blind-copying Ireland, and that Article 40.3.3 remains highly contentious, has been the source of untold trouble and heartbreak, has required at least three costly referendums for its amendment since then, and is now facing widespread demands for its repeal.
To cut it equally short, what Tony Mifsud of Gift of Life wants Malta to do is mimic the situation in Ireland before the ugly controversy of Girl X. Even the Irish have realised that placing pregnant women under police guard to prevent them leaving Ireland for an abortion was an insane interpretation of Article 40.3.3 and have since amended it to make sure that nothing and no one can stop an Irish woman leaving Ireland to have an abortion.
In his letter to The Times, Mr Mifsud displays phenomenal ignorance of legal concepts. Having had to come to terms, after a great deal of difficulty and many explanations, with the fact that the criminal code of a country is territorial and so Maltese women who have abortions outside Malta cannot be prosecuted on their return, he is trying a new tack: equating pregnant women who travel out of Malta with the abduction of children. Mr Mifsud does not speak of pregnant women who leave Malta, but of women who ‘abduct a foetus’. I can’t imagine what he might be suggesting, unless it is foetal passports obtained only with the signature of the father, and pregnancy tests for every woman of child-bearing age who has a Maltese passport, before she leaves the country and when she returns (against the law on several counts).
Here he is on the subject, writing in representation of the Malta Unborn Child Movement: “It appears that when a pregnant woman decides to have an abortion overseas, with the clear intent to terminate the life of – to kill – the unborn child and subsequently leaves Malta for this purpose, she has effectively, abducted the child, probably also against the wishes of the natural father….In an attempted abortion overseas, a Maltese woman tries to remove an unborn child from Malta, to wherever, specifically to kill him….What about a concerted effort regarding abortion overseas from the tandem composed of the two ministries (the Ministry of Justice and the Ministry of Social Policy)? Both ministers are known to be pro-life activists. If for some technical reasons, this is not possible, parliament, composed solely of the two big parties which are both pro-life, can make this possible!…..Unborn Maltese children must be protected from abortions overseas.”
The mind boggles as to how the Malta Unborn Child Movement proposes doing this, given that we Maltese women have freedom of movement throughout the EU and don’t even need to go through passport control in the Schengen Zone, of which neighbouring Sicily, with all its abortion clinics, forms part. I’d like to see the Maltese authorities trying to keep a pregnant woman under house arrest to prevent her leaving the country, as with Girl X. That’s all they need to do to have a revolution on their hands.
During one of the more controversial periods in Ireland’s abortion history, a commentator wrote: “The boat to England is the ultimate answer to abortion in Ireland.” And so it is with Malta. The Air Malta flights to London and Catania have been our abortion expresses for years. Now, with cheap flights and EU membership, it’s even easier. Like Ireland, we are exporting the problem instead of dealing with it. And like Ireland, our approach to the matter is one long essay in mealy-mouthed hypocrisy. As long as our neighbours will perform our abortions for us, we needn’t sully our hands by dealing with the situation ourselves. It is thanks to those neighbours that we don’t have to contend with a nightmare situation of back-street illegal abortions.
Every year, more than 6,000 Irish women travel to England for an abortion, and the numbers are steadily growing, not shrinking. An Australian woman wrote to a Dublin newspaper a few years ago: “How is it that this country, which fought for so long for its independence, is prepared to depend on its former coloniser to provide an essential service to women in need?” The same, of course, can be said of Malta. An Irish pro-choice campaigner observed in 2003: “In a way, we are lucky to have England. Otherwise, we would be having back-street abortions.” Maltese women are lucky to have England, too. Correction: the Maltese government is lucky to have England, because the service provided by English clinics allows the Maltese government to sweep this matter under the carpet. Meanwhile, all three political parties declare that they are against abortion, in full awareness that Malta’s abortion service is being provided by Italy and Britain.
83 Comments Comment
Leave a Comment
Actually, if Tony Mifsud were to have his way, even pregnant women who travel abroad without any intention to abort and without the consent of the father would be guilty of abduction! Making no distinction between birth and conception leads to all these ludicrous situations.
I suppose that on the same level of thinking, any pregnant woman coming to Malta, is an accomplice to illegal immigration!
“…the criminal code of a country is territorial and so Maltese women who have abortions outside Malta cannot be prosecuted on their return” – in principle, yes, but our Criminal Courts do have jurisdiction in case of certain offences committed outside Maltese territory. If Parliament so decides, abortion may be made an offence under Maltese law (and hence prosecuted in Malta) even if committed outside Malta.
[Daphne – No, we’ve been through all that already. It can’t. That’s why the Irish had to resort to trying to prevent women from leaving the country for abortions, rather than prosecuting them on their return.]
I agree that abortion should be a viable option but wouldn’t use the argument that the nine months spent in the womb are ‘irrelevant’. If so, I would expect to read biological reasons rather than social ones. A foetus isn’t yet human but it is obviously alive – and the facts that the law finds it common sense to remember the date of birth and that teenagers are reluctant to imagine their parents procreating aren’t really going to change that.
I stress this because I feel that it reduces the gravity of the matter. Terminating a pregnancy in many cases may be a more humane option than seeing it through but in each instance a life is still being ended.
Also I think one should remember that the mere introduction of abortion is hardly a victory for women’s rights. That confused 15 year old who is browbeaten by her religious parents into keeping an unwanted baby could just as easily be forced by just about anyone into having an unwanted abortion.
[Daphne – I see your point, but fail to agree. No 15-year-old wants a baby, and if she does, there is something very wrong with her life. In a situation where a 14-year-old or 15-year-old is pregnant, it is really very difficult to decide which is the more godless option: to insist that she has the baby (she’s certainly not going to insist on it herself) or to put her mind at rest about the morality and acceptability of an abortion, so that she can have one without feeling she’s done something much worse than have the baby. My point here, and every time I write about the subject, is that there are no cut-and-dried answers. Religion is welcomed by some because it seems to present us with certainties, leaving us without the necessity of having to think things out. I can assure you that few women think of abortion as anything other than extremely serious. And yes, legal abortion is definitely a victory for women. Whatever our personal views on the matter of abortion itself, we have to be able to see that. Thousands, perhaps millions, of women’s lives have been ruined or destroyed by lack of abortion, or by back-street abortions. Yet no woman’s life has ever been destroyed or ruined by an abortion. Yes, you have to factor in the incipient life that’s terminated, but I come from the school of thought that, if you can take a pill 24 hours after sex that goes wrong, to avoid bringing an unwanted child into the world and causing chaos and disruption, then go ahead and do so. It is the alternative that is actually the irresponsible route: to let the foetus grow until it becomes an issue, or to bring the baby into the world and treat it to a life of misery.]
There you go again Daphne … you deliberately misquote AD’s Press Statement! Do you do this on purpose? Or do you do this because you are incapable of doing otherwise? One wonders… ehheheheeh
For the record:
1) AD said that it will not sign GoL’s petition to entrench the abortion ban in the constitution. And that it thinks that GoL’s fervour is totally unwarranted because currently there is no political discussion on the issue. Hummm you chose to twist the facts by saying “Only yesterday, Alternattiva Demokratika felt it necessary to issue a statement declaring … that abortion is not an issue in Malta”. You can surely give Goebbles a lesson in manipulation…
2) You are seemingly critical of AD’s stand on abortion and yet in your article entitled the Plastic foetus army is back – TMI 19th September, you said the following “People like me, who are fighting against the interfering, irritating and undemocratic goals of Gift of Life, are labelled by them as ‘baby-killers’ and ‘pro-abortionists’. I speak for myself when I say that I am neither” perhaps trying to imply that you as well are against abortion. Is this another case of the Dr Daphne & Mrs Caruana Galizia syndrome aka the what’s good for the goose is NOT good for the gander syndrome???? Hummm in fact till last Thursday your stance was pretty much the same as AD’s … People change their minds with time (and so do you albeit after barely 48hrs)… but let’s not go there!
3) I particularly like the following bit “The political parties shouldn’t be checking each other’s stance on abortion.” Yeah right, tell this to your friends at l-istamperija… During the EP elections in 2004, they spent a whole campaign doing precisely that! Nothing more than that! But I suppose that the Nats are sanctity incarnate, and therefore beyond criticism … especially yours.
Top marks for CONSISTENCY
[Daphne – Here’s the story in full glory. My stance is not the same as AD’s at all. My reason for opposing the entrenchment has little to do with abortion being banned by means of the Criminal Code, and even less to do with the fact that all political parties in Malta are against abortion. I didn’t misquote AD at all, just pointed out that, like the other two political parties, they have seen fit to jump on the fundamentalist bandwagon.
A good summary of the case for choice Daphne. There is just a minor point and it does not affect your argument. There is one conception that IS celebrated: that of the son of God (some say) by Mary some 2,000 years ago!
Best wishes
Roger
[Daphne – Hi Roger! How clever of you to remember that. But it would be the Catholic Church to mark world history’s only conception anniversary.]
I’m livid at the mere thought that Mr. Mifsud has thought it fit to air such a ludicrous idea.
I can tell him one thing: even if by some freak of nature his absurd notion were to be adopted, if somebody had to test me for pregnancy or for non-pregnancy on my leaving the country, I will use whatever is in my hand luggage to ensure that they know what a woman’s wrath feels like, even if it only a nail file! Indeed, pity we cannot take aerosols in our hand luggage any longer! I would gladly empty them in my “tester’s” orifices.
Come on, let’s get a grip. I’m a practising Catholic but I do not dream of imposing my principles on anybody in Malta let alone on anybody wanting to travel abroad. I’m married and happily, so a child in my life would be a happy arrival, even if unplanned. But I cannot, for the life of me, imagine what disaster it could wreak on some hapless young girl who did not will to get pregnant or a raped girl/woman.
I can tell the Gift of Life and the other stupidly-named movement one thing: let them taste what rape is all about. Let them feel the “fruit” of the rape growing inside them and ruling over their life and then let them talk! I have been subjected to attempted rape some 8 years ago and to this day I shudder to think what could have happened had the guy succeeded and, worse still, got me pregnant. The first thought in my mind when the attack started was not whether he would kill me there and then (as he tried to do by strangling me when he saw I would not yield) but the diseases he could have and making me pregnant. I’m ashamed to think that fellow Maltese are even thinking these thoughts. They’re no better than the Islamic fundamentalists.
I’m not saying that abortion should be legislated for because I’m against abortion in principle but to suggest that women should remain in Malta because they are pregnant is insane, unacceptable and if ever these Neanderthals had any sympathy from any woman in Malta, I can assure them that they have lost all sympathy and backing from all women of child-bearing age. What do they think we are? Poodles? Cattle? Incredible! Thank God the Times editor did not chuck out Mifsud’s letter. At least we know where they’re coming from and where these people want to get. Utter control over women’s lives. That’s what they want. What’s next? They tell us that marital rape is fine if the husband wants the wife to become pregnant and she does not want to?
And one last thing: this Constitution entrenchment thing is absurd. What next, entrenching all criminal offences? I’ve got an idea, Mr. Vincenti, why don’t we do away with the Criminal Code and transfer all crimes (what the heck, even contraventions) to the Constitution? Leave us in peace, why don’t you, Vincenti and Mifsud? You take care of your pregnancies whilst we take care of ours, thank you very much.
[Daphne – Lorna, it gives us an inkling of just how terrible life must have been for women in the past, if some men believe they can behave like this today. Poor things, it doesn’t even bear thinking about. Their lives must have been a frightening hell. And it’s still like that for so many millions of women in less developed parts of the world, and under extreme Islam.]
@Daphne: I have no intention of starting a polemic (and I will stop here) but the Criminal Courts have jurisdiction in case of a Maltese national who causes personal injury to another Maltese national even if the injury is caused outside Malta. There are also other offences, especially when committed by specified categories of persons, which are prosecutable in Malta even if committed abroad. It is my opinion that there is nothing to prevent the Maltese Parliament from enacting a law making it a criminal offence prosecutable in Malta in case of abortion committed abroad.
I make these comments without entering into the merits of the other points in this debate, of course.
[Daphne – My legal consultants tell me otherwise, but given that there are more than a few lawyers who read this blog and who would have their own views, those views are more than welcome. In this, of course, I discount that walking farce, Toni Abela.]
Dear Catholic church,
Please respect my freedom of thought and get your robe-clad, gold-plated misogynistic ideas of intolerance, ostracism and moral guilt trips out of my life and more importantly, out of my country’s legislation. Not everyone follows your same strict and often groundless ideologies. Leave my choice of partner, my firm belief in birth control, my sexuality and my option for divorce alone. You’ve done enough damage already.
Sincerely,
Agnostic Annie
I fully agree with DCG. I think that females should be given more credit in all this, as I feel they are being sidelined. Whilst in reality what’s to happen or not would ultimately be affecting us females.
I’d venture to say that these guys are more of a pathological case. Why would I have to keep the baby, at the age of 14, or 15, or 16 – at any age for that matter, if I couldn’t cope with it??? Wouldn’t that be ruining my life and the baby’s too??!! No, really, I don’t know why they can’t get this.
I seriously can’t understand the reasoning behind their thought. I really wish for more females to speak out their mind on this issue, as they are really lacking from doing so. These guys can’t impose and ruin others’ lives. They are against abortion? Then they can opt not to resort to it!! No, wait, they are men right??
Yet no woman’s life has ever been destroyed or ruined by an abortion.
Daphne, I would not be too assertive on your statement above. Many a woman has suffered psychological distress following an abortion.
Apart from this, I fail to see how can a woman, after consenting with her husband to have a baby, have the absolute prerogative to or not to carry on with the pregnancy for no valid reason at all. After all the offspring-to-be is not only hers. I fail to see why the husband should not figure in the equation.
[Daphne – Funny how it’s always men who seem to be experts in the psychological distress suffered by women after they have abortions. None of the (several Maltese) women I know who have had abortions have suffered distress as a result. The distress was caused by something entirely different – the relationship that resulted in the pregnancy. If, in a marriage, a woman decides to have an abortion without her husband’s consent, then you should be able to see that the problem is not the unilateral decision to have an abortion.]
I think the problem with Maltese liberals, in contexts such as abortion and divorce, is that there can’t seem to be a common stand. Even though Maltese liberals probably outnumber conservatives, on the other hand, conservatives all jump on the “I’m a Catholic so I’m against abortion/divorce” bandwagon, whether they are Nats or Labourites. No wonder Maltese laws are still very conservative.
Something’s not functioning well in our society if on such a matter women don’t even try to speak their mind. Why would they do so??? I can’t quite get that.
Many friends of mine, see it the way I do, yet they never do express their opinion while in the company of others. On the other hand, many of my foreign friends speak about such matters on a daily basis. Something’s quite wrong. And being myself a female, well, it kind of bothers me. We too can, better say MUST, speak about it. We cannot let others impose their view on us.
[Daphne – Maltese women are raised from birth to come across as sweet and docile while doing what the hell they want to do in secret. It’s a dishonest and hypocritical society we live in.]
How would one go about determining who is the pregnant traveller? Take a urine sample to the checkin desk and wait for the results in the transit lounge?
[Daphne – I know, it’s hilarious, isn’t it? They’ll have a little woman standing there with stacks of ClearBlue: ‘Aw hi, mur aghmel daqsxejn pipi u deffes dan go fih, hi.’]
Dear Daphne,
don’t play this game! What is the difference between saying that you are not a pro-abortionsit and AD saying that it is against abortion????
one more thing had AD wanted to jump on the fundamentalist bandwagon, it would have signed the bloomin’ petition! Did AD do si???? but then again logic is not your forte… we can’t expect otherwise from a climate change denier…. heehheehhe
[Daphne – Why are the Labour party and AD represented by whackos on this blog? It’s not good PR. I wrote that I am not PERSONALLY in favour of abortion, which means that I WOULDN’T HAVE ONE MYSELF AND IN FACT NEVER DID. What other people do is their business, and I wouldn’t dream of forcing anyone to have a baby. It’s easy for AD to say it is against abortion: as with the other two parties, that’s the easy way out. The truth is that this issue is not a black-and-white, open-shut case. The political parties have written themselves out of the public debate on abortion that is even now taking place without them.]
yeah right!!! continue playing with words Daphne …. don’t worry about the whacko bit, I’m not going to sue you eheh and anyway it’s just another case of the pot calling the kettle black …..
[Daphne – Sigh.]
Daphne – why are you PERSONALLY not in favour of abortion ?
[Daphne – Because I enjoy reproducing myself.]
maybe this is a clever ploy by Paul Vincenti to inflame the pro-choice community, he may be a pro-life in disguise.
It’s a long shot, but would explain why an otherwise clever person would come out with such a stupid idea.
@ Lino
Take it up with God and not with women. Since, most probably you’re a believer, it was He, who determined that only women can get pregnant.
I also think that this is one of the main reasons why men wish to control the life of pregnant women. God has left us(men) out of the equation completely other than the sex at the very beginning. I have a feeling that some men resent this.
[Daphne – You have a feeling? It’s a fact, which is why all those running around trying to stop women having abortions seem to be men. It’s obvious from reading between the lines of what they say that it’s not so much the termination that bugs them, as the fact that they can’t stop it.]
Ok – here’s to flippancy. Do you mean that if you didn’t fancy ‘reproducing yourself’ at any one time, you’d have been OK with aborting your child ?
[Daphne – It wasn’t a flippant answer. It was a true one.]
and as for the question ….?
[Daphne – I answered it. The reason I didn’t have an abortion had nothing to do with any of the rubbish spouted by Gift of Life, and everything to do with the fact that I wanted those babies. That’s the only reason why anyone should ever have a baby: because they want to, and not because somebody else, or some silly organisation, tries to give them a big guilt-trip about it. You’re clearly not very bright, otherwise you would have understood that the underlying theme of my articles on abortion is that you have to walk a mile in another woman’s shoes before you can understand her decision. Otherwise you should just keep quiet. I can’t claim to understand the decisions of those who have an abortion, because I have not been in their position. I take the attitude that how they deal with it is up to them, because my experience is not theirs nor am I they. So, just to spell it out: any questions you put to me about what I would do in this or that hypothetical position are completely irrelevant, because how should I know? I was never in that position. When I was in the position of being pregnant, I had a baby, not an abortion – and three times, not once.]
I’ll try to help Marise with her question.
Should a referendum on abortion ever be held in Malta, would you (Daphne) vote in favour of its introduction or vote against? Would you perhaps abstain?
I would vote in favour and I’m a man.
[Daphne – I would vote in favour. I am only against it for myself, though even that opinion is irrelevant now, given that I am 44 and my husband almost 53 and we’re not going to be so insanely irresponsible as to run about having babies at this age. Everyone else can do what they like, and that’s why I’d vote in favour. I think it’s hypocritical to export the problem to London and Catania when we should be dealing with our own problems ourselves. I felt differently when I was younger and didn’t have much experience of life. One’s attitudes change as one grows up.]
@ Daphne
” I take the attitude that how they deal with it is up to them, because my experience is not theirs ”
uisng this logic then any crime is excusable because if you put yourself in someone else’s shoes then every single action is a result of “being in those shoes”,
yet society still creates basic rules and laws that regulate what one may or may not do, murder, theft and even abortion currently fall into that category. True, a murder out of passion may have a different sentence than a murder out of greed, but they are both regarded as murders in the eye of the law.
[Daphne – You’re confusing issues. The point is that I DON’T think abortion is murder, or that it should be a crime. And that same thinking is what underpins the pro-abortion lobby and the laws that allow abortion in most of the world. There are lots of things that are legal and of which I don’t approve and would never do myself.]
Thanks Daphne. That answers my question and Marise’s.
cu Colin
With the situation in Ireland what it was in the past century with girls taken to so-called ‘Laundries’ to have their baby in secret only to end up physically and emotionally abused for life, its no wonder that some sectors of their society have remained so fundamentally against abortion. Watch ‘The Magdalen Sisters’ or ‘Life in a Cold Climate’ for further instruction.
No, Daphne, I don’t feel I should keep quiet simply because you insist I must. I am trying to better understand what YOU mean when you say that YOU, PERSONALLY, are against abortion. You see, that statement seems to imply (albeit, perhaps, unintentionally) that you may have a problem with abortion although you are trying to allow for the fact that others may not. Now, however, it seems that what you are in fact saying is that you had no problem with having your children – which is not really the same as saying you are against abortion, is it ? That seems a little naughty to me.
[Daphne – I’m not insisting you keep quiet. Quite the opposite: I’m allowing you to say what you please on my blog. You really are having trouble understanding a simple explanation, aren’t you? I’ve already hazarded a pretty accurate guess as to which convent school you went to, but I don’t want to seem prejudiced by spelling it out. I have written reams about this subject, and I’m not going through the arguments again. Here’s a summary of what I think: abortion is not a black-and-white issue; there should be no dogmatic statements; arguments based on religion should not be imposed on others; arguments based on science should allow for the fact that we don’t know enough; arguments based on philosophy should take into account the fact that there is no universal agreement on when life begins; abortion is not murder according to the legal definition of murder; forcing a woman to have a baby she doesn’t want is reprehensible; taking the morning after pill to alleviate a lifetime of problems is a sensible option; whether abortion is wrong or not is a subjective view and not an objective one, and so we have no right to impose that view on others; I never wanted to have an abortion, but then I don’t know what I would have wanted in vastly different circumstances; I am against abortion for myself, but for all I know I might have changed my mind given the wrong set of circumstances; the thought of forcing a woman to have a baby she doesn’t want fills me with horror; this horror is so great that I can’t understand why others don’t understand it. The trouble with women like you – and then this is just a vibe I’m picking up from the way you write – is that you’ve probably been raised with a Pollyanna view of life, in which all problems can be solved with the help of ‘faith’. Sorry, but historical experience has shown us that they can’t be.]
@ Daphne ” point is that I DON’T think abortion is murder, or that it should be a crime”
I’m intrigued, so tell me, at what stage do YOU believe abortion becomes a crime? And what if a mother kills her new-born baby, would you consider that murder? And do you consider that a father of an unborn fetus concieved deliberately out of a consensual relationship has any right in blocking the abortion of his child is the relationship breaks off towards the end of a pregnancy (I have first hand experience of this).
[Daphne – Here we go again. Abortion isn’t a crime. Induced abortion is a crime. Miscarriages are abortions. In jurisdictions where induced abortion is legal, the cut-off point is set at when the foetus is viable outside the womb. This is because, at that point, it is clearly an autonomous being. Before that, it is not. I’m content to go along with that, though I would prefer it if the morning-after pill were to be so widely available that there would be no need of all of this. No, I definitely don’t think the father has any right to veto an induced abortion, whether in or out of marriage. It’s not fair, but then the biology isn’t fair, either. The woman gets pregnant and the man doesn’t. I’m sorry to hear of your experience (I mean it), but you have to understand that if she felt so strongly as to break up with you, then she would have had reason to think seriously about whether or not to have your baby, and concluded otherwise. I wouldn’t have done it, but then I don’t know what it’s like to be her. And if you broke up with her, well, then….]
I’m almost embarrassed to repeat this but…… here goes ….. you go on and on and on but you still insist on burying that little ambiguous disclaimer ‘I am against abortion for myself’ within a fascinating stream of subjective, occasionally self-contradictory, statements. Seriously, Daphne, can you spell it out simply for dimwits like myself – what do you mean when you say : ‘I am against abortion for myself’ ? Do you have any problem with the concept of abortion ie. do you perceive anything possibly wrong with it and therefore that is why you are against it – personally, or do you simply mean that you enjoyed having your babes ? It would be really nice to clear this because I hate to take up your valuable time in this way and I appreciate your taking the trouble to inform and update myself and others like me (sadly, they do exist)
[Daphne – Oh, Christ. Let me keep it short and sweet. I would not have had an abortion. I do not care what others do. I would rather women took the morning-after pill than induced an abortion at 20 weeks. But maybe there are reasons why they can’t. I would rather see a foetus terminated in the womb than born to a lifetime of misery. I would rather see a foetus terminated in the womb than see his mother’s life ruined. Ideally, if you can deliver your baby and raise it, then you should do so. But if you can’t, or believe you can’t, then it’s nobody else’s business. There are certain issues for which there are no black and white answers. Part of being a grown-up is accepting this and trying to reach your own conclusions. This is one such issue. Nobody is going to help you. You have to work it out for yourself by reading and listening. That’s what I did. Some people take the easy way out by accepting the opinion of the Catholic Church. I didn’t. Some people say that no good can come of doing wrong (committing an abortion). They’re wrong. They say that doing the right thing (not having an abortion) will produce the right results. It doesn’t necessarily do so. We were raised to believe that there is virtue in suffering. There isn’t.]
Daphne
“Funny how it’s always men who seem to be experts in the psychological distress suffered by women after they have abortions. None of the (several Maltese) women I know who have had abortions have suffered distress as a result.”
As to the first sentence, I fail to pinpoint the alleged expertise you have attributed to me. Medical reviews give a lot of information. Besides, “None of the (several Maltese) women I know who have had abortions have suffered distress as a result”, hardly constitutes a categorical “Yet no woman’s life has ever been destroyed or ruined by an abortion”
Colin Vassallo
From what I gather, you too are a believer, and it was also He who made it a female and a male to make an offspring and more over that this should be the result of a relationship based on love.
Having children is a lifelong pilgrimage and not just a nine month excursion. If you think that a loving father does not share the onus of his beloved’s pregnancy (albeit not physically), and that a father’s contribution towards pregnancy is just sex, then you are missing out a lot about what it takes to be a responsible father.
And Daphne, yes, it is very much the termination of my offspring-to-be that would definitely bug me, if this were to be for no valid reason other than a free for all legislation.
Without entering into the argument about the rights of unborn babies, there maybe various valid reasons why an abortion may be permitted e.g. rape, one-night stands,tender age etc. to which I agree that there should be legislation, and I would not impose the lack of even the most liberal abortion laws upon others, I definitely would not want liberal laws to impose upon the rights of my marriage relationship.
[Daphne – There is also a wealth of medical research into post-natal depression and post-natal psychosis. Are those two conditions to be used as an argument against having babies? There is far more post-natal depression than there is post-abortion depression, but nobody’s saying ‘Don’t have babies because you might get depressed.’
Please don’t hector me about what having children entails. I had three and raised them to adulthood….with their father.
My sympathies are with men who feel they have no control over what their ex-girlfriends or ex-wives decide when it comes to terminating a pregnancy, but that’s life. Women get pregnant, and men don’t. If biology were more efficiently organised (“I don’t think I want this pregnany; here, you take over.”) things would be different. But that’s out of the question. Take it up with “He who made it a female and a male”. He clearly didn’t have equal rights in mind when he saddled women with the full onus of incubation, birth, feeding and the rest. I disagree with your view that abortion should be available specifically in cases of rape. If it’s wrong to terminate a pregnancy, it’s wrong to terminate a pregnancy, however it was caused. If the wrongness of termination is derived from the right to life of the foetus, then that right to life still holds, no matter how it came into being. So you can’t differentiate between rape and other causes. This is a basic legal principle.]
In your response to Anton Agius, you wrote:
“The truth is that this issue is not a black-and-white, open-shut case.”
And neither is it about Abortion (as your friend Dr. Borg Cardona) titled his latest blog.
It is a personal-decision over which no outsider has, or should have, a say.
The question is: Should the rights of a woman, granted and guaranteed to her by the Constitution — Chapter IV, Article 32 — be vitiated by Articles 241 – 244 of the Criminal Code?
[Articles 241 – 244 deal with Abortion. They are clearly inconsistent with the Constitution and therefore, are VOID as per Article 6 (of the Constitution).]
The Constitutional Court has the power to strike down this offensive portion of the Criminal Code, and thereby, decriminalize Abortion.
The answer is to find a competent lawyer and take it to Court.
I believe Daphne is quite right when saying it’s all about walking a mile in another woman’s shoes. In my late twenties,footloose and fancy free, I became pregnant and the father (or Sperminator as I’ve always referred to him) wanted to have nothing to do with the outcome. In his own words, when I broke the news to him over the phone, it was my problem and I was to deal with it, and if I didn’t mind he was in the middle of cooking dinner. (Yes, he really was quite a piece of work, as I was to find out far too late.) I had been anti-abortion all my life.. but guess what? It was one of the first thoughts that sprang to my mind in the middle of all this mess. Luckily for me my family were very supportive and I had a strong set of friends, and therefore I decided to go on ahead with the pregnancy. But ever since then I’ve always wondered what I would have done if I were alone in the world.
Very disappointing. For someone who has awarded herself the right to be as publicly aggressive and generally offensive as yourself, you seem to have an enormous aversion to facing this point……. [Let me keep it short and sweet. I would not have had an abortion] … well, bully for you but you still refuse to clarify what you mean when you say you’re not in favour of abortion. [I do not care what others do]……. I think that much is manifestly clear. [I would rather women took the morning-after pill than induced an abortion at 20 weeks]….. but WHY ? does a developing child become more human or more alive with each passing day ? Is a two-year old any more alive or any more human than a one-month old ? . [I would rather see a foetus terminated in the womb than born to a lifetime of misery.] …. would you also rather the child were shot at age two than live on unhappily to age 10. Would you volunteer to do the shooting ? [I would rather see a foetus terminated in the womb than see his mother’s life ruined]……. would you advocate shooting the kid at age two / three / ten, if s/he seemed to be ruining mum’s life ? [Ideally, if you can deliver your baby and raise it, then you should do so]….. Halleluja [But if you can’t, or believe you can’t, then it’s nobody else’s business]….. and if you decide to kill your kid, then it’s entirely up to you, isn’t it ? [There are certain issues for which there are no black and white answers]. ….. the general consensus would seem to be that killing is wrong. [Part of being a grown-up is accepting this and trying to reach your own conclusions] …. another part of being a grown up is to stop kidding yourself and accept that wrong is wrong, however much it may suit you to reason otherwise. [Nobody is going to help you. You have to work it out for yourself by reading and listening]…. of course, what you read and who you listen to is your choice entirely. [That’s what I did] …no one’s going to argue with that. [Some people take the easy way out by accepting the opinion of the Catholic Church]. ….most would see this as the hard way. The easy way is to listen to the all too plentiful voices who tell you what you’re only too happy to hear. [I didn’t] ….that much is clear. [Some people say that no good can come of doing wrong (committing an abortion). They’re wrong]. ….actually, they’re nearer the truth than yourself – a wrong cannot be redressed by another wrong. [They say that doing the right thing (not having an abortion) will produce the right results] …. they say nothing of the sort. What they do say, if you would take the time to listen, is that no wrong is made better by an even worse wrong. A wrong will remain wrong and it’s fallout will never disperse entirely. But it is eminently possible to mitigate the effects of wrongdoing with rightdoing (if i may coin that one). Help, care, love and genuine respect for humanity, these are what offset wrongdoing and make it possible to live through the awful circumstances that we wreak upon one another. The onus is upon us all, individually and as a society. [We were raised to believe that there is virtue in suffering. There isn’t.] …. to treat this final piece of gratuitous rubbish with appropriate care would take up far too much space and I’m sure I’ve bored you enough already
[Daphne – You haven’t bored me at all. It’s just par for the course as far as I’m concerned. Don’t forget I grew up surrounded by girls like you, and still live surrounded by women like you. I once wrote an article about what I called the ‘foot-binding of the mind’ performed on Maltese girls from a certain social background by their parents and their schools, and how they go through life policing each other to ensure that the conformity goes on. The real tragedy, I find, is that minds left undeveloped in early life never really develop properly after that. When my husband argues that Maltese women have only themselves to blame for their sorry predicament, I argue back that he’s being unfair. The Chinese women who had their feet bound couldn’t go far. And the Maltese women who had their minds bound can’t go far either, which is why they are all flocking to the succour of prayer-groups instead of doing something constructive with their lives. Prayer-groups are fine, but they shouldn’t be the only thing. I’m only saying this because I’m guessing you’re one of them. That’s fine by me, but you don’t have to take it out on those who, like me, refused to conform to the Maltese middle-class norm of what makes a ‘nice’ girl. I keep telling the men on this blog that the reason Maltese women don’t speak up for their rights is because they’ve been raised from birth not to put their views on display, lest they seem ‘aggressive’ and put men off (it isn’t nice for women to have opinions). Now here you are, with your opening sentence that betrays where you’re coming from, describing me as someone “who has awarded herself the right to be as publicly aggressive and generally offensive as yourself…”. Women who voice their opinions in public, in a newspaper, are not “publicly aggressive and generally offensive”, despite what your upbringing and schooling may have led you to believe. And I did not award myself the right to speak in public. I was born with it. As were you. You wasted the opportunity to grow beyond convent-school. I didn’t. And there is much more I would have liked to have done, and couldn’t, for a variety of reasons.]
@ Lino
I was raised a catholic, but I’m not much of a believer. I was being sarcastic in my previous post. Since you (all believers) are always invoking God’s will on practically every aspect of human life, I thought it was pertinent to remind you that it was this same God, who decreed that men have no say in procreation, other than the sex at the beginning.
Back to abortion. The only reason why I am in favour of its decriminalisation is that forcing a woman to continue with her pregnancy against her will is, according to me, more cruel (in maltese it’s “hdura”) than the act of abortion itself.
Regarding the father’s say on the issue. Let’s for argument’s sake say that your partner wants to abort your child. What do you propose should be done to force her not to do so? Chain her to a bed and lock her in a dungeon until she delivers. Report her to the police so that they arrest her and lock her up in a cell at Corradino until the baby is born.
Believe me Lino, pregnancy is a woman thing and men have no say whatsoever in the matter. We try our best when our partners are pregnant. We accompany them to the obstetrician for their monthly check-ups. We try to comfort their uneasiness and be present during the actual delivery. I was present when my two children were delivered. The experience was overwhelming. The excruciating pain my wife suffered and the unbearable smell of blood are what I remember most. The babies popped out of nowhere. And yes, I was happy eventually and that’s where my responsibility as a father started.
You appear to cling to a somewhat archaic view of how today’s Maltese woman views herself. While there undoubtedly are still many who shy clear of what would nowadays be identified as self-assertion, I think you will find that a majority of women today have made the ‘leap’ comfortably. Where you trip over yourself in your haste, of course, is confusing the universal right to speak in public with a gratuitous need to be cheap, offensive and unwarrantedly aggressive. To prevent you repeating your mistake, I will here point out that this applies to everyone, without exception.
[Daphne – Oh Marise, I’m sure you’re right: that’s why public life in Malta is bursting at the seams with women, and that’s why, when newspapers and magazines need to interview high profile women it’s always the same five individuals. And that’s why, as I’m putting together the next issue of a business interview magazine, I realise that the only woman in there is the one on the editorial page – me. My view is not archaic. It’s up-to-the-minute. Quick, rack your brain and remember what I do for part of my living: I write a newspaper column about social issues and current affairs. Let me remind you once more: your attempt here at policing a fellow middle-class ex-convent school girl by calling her ‘cheap, offensive and unwarrantedly aggressive’ can’t work, because I’ve put myself outside your system. And ‘unwarrantedly’ is not a word, anyway. Now go back to your prayer-group, and police some nice girls. Xi dwejjaq fikhom. There’s no escape.]
lino Sunday, 21 September 1311hrs
“Yet no woman’s life has ever been destroyed or ruined by an abortion.”
How do you know that?
[Daphne – He was quoting me. I wrote that. One doesn’t know. One simply uses one’s intelligence. There is no way on earth that an abortion can destroy your life, unless it takes place in an illegal back-street clinic in a country that bans abortion and which is too far away from another state where abortion is legal.]
You wrote: “None of the (several Maltese) women I know who have had abortions have suffered distress as a result.” Others may be of quite a different opinion you know.
[Daphne – Yes, and presumably you’re one of them. I also know lots of women who have suffered extreme distress as a result of having a baby, and two who killed themselves as a result of the psychosis that developed after birth. One was my friend. One was my sister’s friend, in the notorious case where a young mother drove her car into the sea, taking her baby with her. Using your reasoning, this becomes an argument against having babies. I’m beginning to think that none of the people who use your argument, like those odd-bods at Gift of Life, have ever heard of post-natal depression.]
I am starting to understand why so many Maltese women are scared to be seen as pro abortion with attitudes like Marise’s. Seems to me that a group of men are trying to sentence women to bear childen against their will and to do this should be seen as violation of their basic rights as human beings.
There are a lot of Maltese women who have had abortions for various reasons, some of them have kids now and are fantastic parents. I can only try to imagine how difficult it must be to have to live with something so difficult and personal with this issue coming up every now and again.
Daphne is clearly being unselfish and doing this for all the right reasons. Her unselfish attitude is very rare in our society so hats off to her.
It is a cruel quirk of life that morals and ethics are not falsifiable (in the Popper sense). They aren’t even empirically testable.
Wild conjecturing by the village idiot carries the same weight as the educated opinion of an expert because there are no criteria that can be applied to separate the wheat from the chaff.
The arguments offered against abortion can easily (and effectively) be countered by solipsistic arguments. There is no standard procedure or premise. The absolutes employed by either side are mutually exclusive (the objectivity of morals and ethics and the subjectiveness of the “I”)
There is a definite right and there is a definite wrong. The injustice done (and suffered) is not always obvious, but it is there.
I know I’ll be getting some stick for saying all this, but introducing grey areas by means of specious arguments is mere sophistry and doesn’t contribute anything to the sum of knowledge. And I thought I’d inject some scientific method into the discussion.
You can fire away now …
[Daphne – I’m not going to fire away, because previous comments of yours have shown me that you come from the religious, not the impartial, stand-point. The fact is that not one of the ‘abortion is murder’ campaigners have come up with an answer – satisfactory or unsatisfactory, just no answer at all – to the question of how they feel about pinning a woman down to force her to incubate and deliver a baby against her will. That is the rationale that underpins most pro-abortion sentiment and even the sentiments of those who, despite their personal beliefs, reject the imposition of anti-abortion laws on others who may not feel as they do. Precisely as you said, there is always a wrong and a right and it is sometimes not obvious. Sometimes, the ‘right’ may lie in avoiding suffering or the cause of long-term far-reaching damage that spans the generations, but this demands thought rather than the ready-packaged answers of religion.]
Quote
Precisely as you said, there is always a wrong and a right and it is sometimes not obvious.
Unquote
I said that the victim of the injustice is not always very easy to identify, not what is right and what is wrong. I’m not nitpicking here. It’s an important difference.
Regarding “the question of how they feel about pinning a woman down to force her to incubate and deliver a baby against her will” I can only say that the situation is unimaginably difficult. It’s easy, from an armchair, to say that she should keep the baby. On the other hand, what will killing the baby solve? If the pregnancy was the result of a rape, the baby is the result of the injustice, not the injustice. What will killing him solve?
If the baby is “unwanted” … it was the result of a casual – perhaps careless encounter – why should the baby pay with his life?
I acknowledge that I can give these answers because I am not emotionally involved, on the other hand I think that emotions should not be our guide through life.
Having said all this, no argument – cogent as it may be – can counter “But I want so …”
At the end of the day it all boils down to the strength of one’s moral convictions. The reason – as I see it – why abortion is such an emotional issue is that most of us are convinced that we are dealing with a new life which – let’s face it – could have easily been one of us. If we were the foetus and somebody asked us “Would you mind if I stopped you growing because ____________?” (insert reason here)what would our answer be?
I’m just saying, as the Americans would say.
[Daphne – The reason it is such an emotional issue is entirely due to the fact that religion taught us to see it as such. Before the advent of this received wisdom, it was considered entirely normal, understandable and acceptable for a woman to try to stop her pregnancy by means of potions, throwing herself downstairs and digging the fields for 20 hours at a stretch. Our forebears had a far less sentimental approach to the foetus. It is almost inevitably those who are tied to religion who oppose it, because they have been taught to oppose it, while others are rather more circumspect in their approach, like me.]
“The fact is that not one of the ‘abortion is murder’ campaigners have come up with an answer – satisfactory or unsatisfactory, just no answer at all – to the question of how they feel about pinning a woman down to force her to incubate and deliver a baby against her will.”
You cannot do so, I agree, but there do have to be some limits nevertheless (as in fact most countries have) Once the foetus can feel pain or can survive outside the womb (even with artificial means).
Partial birth abortion however should never be tolerated or permitted, however circumspect your approach is!
According to your logic Daphne, why limit abortion to viability? A new-born baby is still fully dependent on its mother, at least till it is one year old when it is then able to crawl and forage indpendently for food. The mother may not want her baby, what is the fundamental difference between a six-month fetus and a six-month infant if both are unwanted by the mother?
[Daphne – Oh dear, another foot-soldier from the Logic Army. Where does logic come into this? Viability is used as the cut-off point because it is when the foetus/infant clearly becomes distinct from the mother. In other words, if you take it out of her body, it will survive, with the aid of lots of medical care and hospital equipment. Before that point, the foetus is part of the woman’s body, can’t survive without being inside it, and so is clearly not a distinct person. A newly-born baby is not fully dependent on its mother. It’s fully dependent on care, whoever gives it. The babies of mothers who die in childbirth survive and grow; they don’t die with their mums.]
Touchy, touchy, Daphne. If you’re looking for stridently bellicose women, such as yourself, in order to satisfy your definiton of ‘modern’/ ’emancipated’ / ‘atypically Maltese’ / or whatever you want to call them, women to grace the pages of your magazine, you’re probably not going to find very many. You may, however, wish to try looking for women who are as comfortably in charge of their own lives as their counterparts in any other country you may care to name but do not seem to need to scream to high heaven about it. Increasingly, it appears that the only inhabitants of this country who have a right to even hold an opinion must be clones of yourself – a man is disqualified by virtue of being a man, any woman who disagrees with you can only be a retard with a convent background, etc., etc. Interestingly, you’re the only person I’ve ever meet who seems to think that the main scope of having children is to reproduce herself.
PS – would you care to lay a small wager on ‘unwarrantedly’ ?
[Daphne – Marise, what I will wager is that my assessment of your age, school background, prayer group membership, social background and current (in)activity is pretty accurate. It’s a free country, so do what you like. What I do object to, though, is the way that women who have made your choices try to police other women to conform to what they have decided is the ‘feminine norm’. Those are your choices. Go ahead and love them. But if every woman who enters public life or business is, by your definition, strident, then you’d better stay comfortably ensconced in your narrow world, because there’s no room for you outside it. Meanwhile, may I hold you up before all the men on this blog as the perfect illustration of what I have been trying to explain to them: that what women in Malta fear is the policing and condemnation of other women, who tell them that if they try to do anything that lends them autonomy, independence and – heaven forfend – a high profile, they are ‘stridently bellicose’. The policing is so vicious that only two types of women can break away from ‘the clique’ and its policing: those with a very strong character, and those who don’t give a damn what people think. And I belong in both categories.
You may be surprised to know, Marise, that I am actually very silent, reserved and quietly spoken. Women like you use the excuse that they are – to quote you – “comfortably in charge of their own lives” – when in reality they are dependent on somebody else’s income, wholly or in part, which means that they are not in charge of their own lives at all, comfortably or otherwise, and even less in charge because they are forever trying to conform to what is expected of them by their policing peers. When the husband on whom all of this hinges walks out, this life implodes and turns to dust, as happens so often. The income has gone, the role of wife has disappeared, and before long, the role of mother will have evaporated, too. I have also noticed a lot of anger simmering below the surface and the constant need to justify the absence of any concrete activity or achievement. If your lack of achievement really doesn’t bother you, then fine and dandy. But if all this anger directed towards women like me is, as I suspect it is, the result of a vague unease at the idea that there were other options in life but you missed the boat, give yourself a good shake and try and get on the next boat instead of wasting your time bitching about other women who do things. And no, I am not touchy. I am just very, very sad that a certain kind of upbringing laid waste to so many Maltese women’s potential.]
btw – the viability argument was tossed out with the other rubbish at least a decade ago. That chestnut was one of several dreamt up by the abortionist brigade in order to convince people like yourself that i) living ii) human beings could be justifiably massacred at will.
[Daphne – No, Marise. You are quite wrong. The viability debate is going on even as we speak. It is currently relevant in Britain and the US. I don’t know enough about the situation elsewhere. Google the keywords ‘viability, 24 weeks, Britain’ and you’ll see what I mean. Meanwhile, this is just one of the first articles that were called up http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-565003/The-survival-rate-babies-born-abortion-limit-24-weeks-improved.html
I’m not a foot soldier, I am actually pro-choice, but you’re not answering my question Daphne, a six month old infant is fully dependent on its mum, if the mum DOES NOT want the baby, does not want to bring it up, and does not want anyone else to take care of it in her stead, has she a right to terminate it? What’s the difference between a six-month old fetus and six-month old infant, apart from the fact that a six-month old infant can clap its hands and laugh if provoked? I am not arguing with you here, I am just curious in how your mind thinks.
[Daphne – You are confusing autonomy as an individual human being with dependence on others. A bedridden 80-year-old is clearly an autonomous person, and his dependence on others for feeding and nappy-changing does not make him any less so. The same holds for babies. Meanwhile, a foetus of under roughly 24 weeks is not an autonomous person because its survival depends on being part of the mother’s body. This is not the same thing as being dependent on a third party for care. Your question as to the difference between a six-month foetus and a six-month-old baby is so fatuous it is beyond belief, and this is quite apart from the fact that late-term abortion is a case apart and very many people have strong objections to it, including myself, purely on the basis of pain and suffering. There is a very clear legal distinction and a less clear moral distinction between the abortion of a foetus and the murder of a baby. Nobody argues that we have the right to murder others, and no law anywhere allows us to murder others if we want to. The state-sanctioned killing allowed is through war or capital punishment, and there are strong moral arguments against both.]
I am a 23 year old woman. 2 years ago, I got pregnant. I was in the middle of my university degree, living alone, working nights and weekends to make it by. If I had to bring a child into this world ALONE with no father or family to support me, his/her live would be a living hell. I graduated with a first and am now in the first year for a masters degree while holding down a full time job. Do I regret I had an abortion when I was 21? NO. In no way was I ready to welcome a human being into this world… Did I see ‘people’ pointing at me ‘hi marelli dik ghamilta ta!!… telat l-Italja ghal-erbghat ijiem….’ yes… but I know I made the right choice for me and for the future of the foetus so no guilty feelings…..it was a choice based on facts not my religion or what other people think…
“Killing the baby” as you (Zizzu) put it means terminating the unwanted pregnacy. What will it solve you asked. Well, the unwanted pregnancy is there no more.
Now answer my questions. Do you think it is right to force a woman to continue with her pregnancy against her will? Do you think it is justified to sentence a woman to a couple of years in prison for committing an abortion?
If I remember well, Daphne wrote a column a couple of years ago on the capability of humans to dehumanise a whole race or another person in order to be able to inflict any amount of torture on them/him/her without remorse. If memory serves me right, the story was about a woman, who locked her daughter in the backyard with the cats for days and nights on end.
This is precisely what pro-life campaigners are doing with respect to pregnant women. They simply dehumanise them and rant about the rights of the foetus instead. This allows them to feel no empathy for the women in question. They are able to see the foetus on the inside, but are unable to see the woman on the outside.
OK Daphne, I think i get you now, you are pro-choice up to 24 weeks, after that you are anti-choice, and I presume that extends to a case such as that for D above,
I didn’t understand your reference to pain though, a 20 week fetus feels pain just as much as a 28 week fetus would. I also don’t agree with you that there is a clear distinction between dependence and autnomy in this case. A fetus depends on maternal nutrition through the placenta, an infant depends on maternal nutrition through her breast, the difference is only technical. Furthermore there are medical means of providing nutrition to a fetus of less than 24 weeks independently of the maternal placenta , therefore your 24 week-rule is not absolute.
[Daphne – No, a foetus depends on far more than nutrition through the placenta. Even if the nutrition is mimicked in an environment outside the womb, a foetus below 24 weeks cannot survive. Its organs are too undeveloped, for one. And no, a baby does not depend on maternal nutrition through the breast. There are two alternatives: another woman’s breast, or infant formula fed through a bottle.]
Actually, Colin, the only people doing any dehumanising are Daphne, yourself and the entire pro-abortion brigade who, on the basis of a self-serving and totally bogus definition, happily dehumanise an entire sector of the human race and are happy to condone the slaughter of uncountable millions of the youngest of our species every year.
[Daphne – My acquaintance the social worker, Malcolm Tortell, made the point on http://www.timesofmalta.com that it’s a shame people who shriek about the rights of foetuses don’t spend more time working with real live children and infants who are abused in Malta: one new case every day. I’ve often made the same point myself. Banging on about hypothetical foetuses and using hyperbole (slaughter, uncountable millions of the youngest of our species…) is a whole lot easier than doing voluntary work that will make a bit of a difference with some real, actual children. Talking is one way of feeling good without actually doing anything.]
Sorry Daph but you ARE wrong. Your knowledge of obstetrics is as poor as your knowledge of Catholicism (for all that you love to rant about it). There isn’t an obstetrics textbook around that still equates the definition of a living human being with viability (by any definition). That ploy worked exceedingly well at the time, so well that it became the basis of law many years ago (when some O and G texts still supported it.) That law, the basis of which is demonstrably unfounded, is now very difficult to reverse because of the huge political backlash this would cause. This in spite of the fact that it is becoming ever clearer that the viability of a foetus will probably co-incide roughly with its’ moment of conception in the not-too-distant future. Rest assured, however, that your colleagues will have cooked up some equally effective, and random, definition to substitute it with by that time.
PS – about those wagers ….. erm …. would you like to suggest a figure ?
[Daphne – Not to seem rude or anything, but you remind me of one of those noisy – and believe me, the most noisy women of my acquaintance are those who are disconnected from the world of work – women who take over the conversation at dinner talking absolute nonsensical tosh, while everyone else at table maintains an awkward silence, so as not to embarrass her and her husband by pointing out that she doesn’t make sense. I always find that kind of situation fascinating, because I’m struck by how the response to the undeveloped opinions of these women is exactly the same as the response of a table of adults to a child giving his opinion about world affairs. There is no foetus at the moment of conception. If a time comes when human beings can be incubated from conception to full-term outside the womb, then clearly, new legislation will have to cover that process. Abortion legislation cannot cover it because it factors in the woman as a party with a vested interest. And please, don’t embarrass yourself by dragging religion into it. It didn’t take much to guess where you’re coming from. You don’t even have the backbone to use your name.]
So charlottea, for you it is acceptable to force a woman through an unwanted pregnancy against her will.
(mhux hi fethet saqajha, mela issa jkollha toqghod ghax hekk haqqha)
You see, I happen to have a daughter. I will never subscribe to that point of view.
[Daphne – The strange thing is that it’s these individual women who are so vicious in ‘punishing’ other women for getting pregnant when they shouldn’t have. It brings to mind the relish with which the women in some sub-Saharan African societies perform genital mutilation on each other – female circumcision – biex joqoghdu f’posthom. A bunch of them pins the girl down while one of them chops off her bits and stitches up her vagina. You would think this was something the men would do to the women, but no, it’s the women doing it to each other. There are moments of disillusionment when I’m arguing for women’s rights and dignity when I think to myself, just let the bloody bitches drown in their own venom and get on with your own life. But then I remember that for every woman like ‘charlottea’ and ‘marise’ there are another five who really are trampled upon. As for women like ‘charlottea’ and ‘marise’ it’s a case of having had a very narrow upbringing and having been trained to think only inside that proverbial box. One just feels terribly sad at the waste. They don’t even have the courage to use their own name.]
You’re wrong there Daphne, I personally know a 22 fetus that survived, and the goalpost is likely to be moved even closer , possibly to 18 weeks within five years, and that’s not to mention transplant of an early implanted fetus which has a realistic possibility of survival outside the native mother’s womb.
Daphne you haven’t answered me regarding your view that “my objection to late abortions is purely due to pain and suffering”, using your argument it would be more humane and safer for the mother to allow their unwanted babies to be born naturally and then to have them put down using anesthetic means. If you find this repulsive than I think you have your answer and I have mine as to whether you are genuinely concerned about the mother’s and baby’s well-being and whether you are genuinely pro-choice or whether you just want to remain in your comfort zone and keep your concience clear, ignoring the facts.
[Daphne – When the goalposts move, the law moves with them. The debate is taking place right now. The point that you and others overlook is that the survival status of the woman doesn’t change. It remains the same. You cannot discuss a law on abortion without factoring in the other party: the woman. Yet you and others constantly talk about the foetus and leave out the woman who carries it, as though The Foetus exists in a vacuum. I have already answered Marise on the subject of foetuses incubated to term outside the womb: that requires new legislation, because there is no ‘host’ – if you want to put it that way – whose rights have to be factored in. I am against causing any form of physical pain, and that’s why I think it would be so very sensible to have the morning-after pill widely available, and very early stage abortion wherever possible, to avoid abortion as a surgical procedure. When I say I am against pain and suffering, I include the mother. I do not believe she should be made to suffer for a lifetime as a penalty for having sex, which is really the undertone of much of this debate. Please do not, once more, insist on blurring the distinction between life in the womb and life outside it. A woman who doesn’t want the baby outside her womb doesn’t have to ‘put it down’. She can just leave it. You can argue that a woman can have her baby and then give it away. This demonstrates that you are a man. A woman would rather her child is not born at all, then carry it to term, give birth to it, then give it away, so that she is forever haunted by the knowledge that somewhere out there, she has a son or daughter. Men don’t really think about these things, because the connection with their children is social. A man can have a child and not know about it. A woman can’t.]
After thousands of years projecting women as the personification of sin, it will not wash away so easily. What can I say, keep it up Daphne, you’re not alone.
Isn’t strange that for quite a considerable number of women saints, it is important to qualify them as both virgins and martyrs. I don’t know of any male saint who is called a virgin.
(Ir-ragel bandiera bajda u l-mara bandiera hamra). Unadulterated sexism a la maltaise and, as you have just said, propagated by women themselves.
You may be unaware of the case in Ireland where a man legally obstructed his estranged wife from implanting their IVF embryo, he won the case and his wife was not allowed to implant the embryo.
In my opinion there is no clear distinction between a single teenage mother aborting her 8 week fetus, a depressed mother killing her new born baby and a priest masturbating into his handkerchief, these all all choice made out of self-preservation. I find all three repulsive, having said that, I was never in their shoes and I can only judge from afar. I am pro-choice but find the idea of abortion repulsive. Thankfully my estranged partner though likewise and we now share a gorgeous bouncing baby.
[Daphne – Once more you show scant understanding of legal principles. A man is permitted to obstruct the implantation of an embryo he has fathered because it will result in a child for whom he is responsible for the next 18 years, financially and otherwise. The same argument cannot be used by a man to force a woman to abort a foetus he has fathered, or to stop her aborting it for that matter, because the foetus – unlike the IVF embryo – is part of her body. No adult can be forced to have a surgical or medical procedure against his/her will, whatever the situation. Nor can the law be used to force any woman to terminate her pregnancy, for whatever reason. It is as I patiently explained to Marise above: embryos incubated outside the womb are subject to different legal principles because there is no woman’s body involved. Congratulations on your lovely baby, but you wouldn’t have known it if it hadn’t been born, so you can’t judge these things in retrospect. Every woman has flushed one, two, three or several early-stage pregnancies down the loo without even noticing or bothering, and most often with huge relief (‘Oh thank God, my period came’). The euphemism is a ‘missed period’, but really it’s an abortion – a spontaneous abortion.]
OK I withdraw from this debate now (without conceding defeat).
On a side-note though, I noted in your other posts that you sometimes reveal the identities of anonymous posters. I presume you trace these by means of their IP addresses or other means. As you have gathered I have a scant knowledge of legal principles, but I know enough to know that using data stored on your server to identify unwilling third parties is probably in violation of the data protection law. In addition it is against basic journalistic ethics and even if neither of the above it is at the very least downright rude. Not everyone has the guts to show their name like you do, and I think you would do well to respect the privacy of whoever visits or posts on your blog if they should choose anonymity. Your blog has enough validity on its own, there is no need for you to dent your credibility by taking cheap shots at those who are placing their trust in your basic journalistic ethics.
[Daphne – I have NEVER revealed the identity of anyone who posts comments here. First of all I wouldn’t, and secondly, I couldn’t. If somebody wants to remain anonymous, there is no way I can find out who that person is. People who want to remain anonymous, like you, use a false name or a pseudonym, and usually give a false email address too. The only thing that the comment-poster can’t fake or disguise is the IP address, which is a serial number, not an actual address. Only the police can trace an IP address, and then only when they have sufficient motivation to do so, which means when a crime is committed and the IP address is a clue. As for the rest, the protocol on blogs allows for pseudonyms, and for people whose identity is known to use a ‘nick’ even when everyone knows who they are, like our very own Kev here. The case you refer to is of a stalker type who was posting aggressive comments on this site under different names but from the same IP address. I merely pointed out to him that changing his name served no purpose if he was going to keep posting through the same system, which would keep giving me the same IP address, and that henceforth, I was going to block all comments from that IP address. I blocked them, and he shifted immediately to Jacques Zammit’s blog to post aggressive comments about me there, so I asked Jacques to take note of his IP number as a precaution. Had I been able to address him directly, I would have. But I couldn’t, because I didn’t know who he is. I really don’t know why you are getting so frantic: your knowledge of IT is as poor as your knowledge of the legal principles that govern abortion. There is no way on earth that I can know who you are. Nor do I care, for that matter. You’re clearly not a stalker. It is with people like ‘Marise’ that I take umbrage: they hide behind the sofa to throw stones, and talk about being ‘comfortably in charge of their life’ when they don’t even have the confidence to stand up and be counted, or to use their real name when attacking somebody who is using hers. My view is this: say what you like anonymously, but if you’re going to attack me personally, then be a man/woman and use your real name. After all, I’m using mine.]
OK that’s reassuring Daphne, thanks for putting my mind at rest
@charlottea
Can you explain to me why you are against abortion? are there any situations where abortion is ‘okay’ in your head?
@D
May I answer too? I am against abortion because I firmly believe it is murder! And no, there are no situations when abortion is OK in my mind! Now, as you may have gathered from my previous postings I do not believe it possible or even right to prevent a woman from having an abortion as long as both she and the doctor are consenting, even in Malta! I do not see it right to ban the morning after pill for example! However, I do believe that there MUST be some legal limitations, namely when the baby starts feeling pain. Quite frankly I believe the law should step in after the first trimester.
yes defintely! i do not think that a fetus into the 2nd trimester should be played with… I mean the mother had the first two months ( and im saying 2 cause you dont really know the first month youre pregnant…)
I believe there is a need for better sex education at secondary level. Teenagers need to be more aware of what is happening. Proper use of contraceptives should be promoted – i know it goes against the chruch but hell it can prevent so many pregnancies and STDs.
Having said that, abortions are a very personal matter and it is up to the individual/s involved. personally i would rather a 15 year old ( or 30 for that matter) abort if she is unable or unfit to take care of the child than this kid ending up a social case. we need teachers and councillers equipped to face these situations.
Mr Buttigieg, pls consider the following scenarios:
1. teenager was raped by a family member – she ends up pregnant
2. a single mother with a severely disable fetus
3. ectopic pregnancy
4. mother – drug abuser
5. mother – AIDS / HIV positive
6. the mother is ill – cancer – chemo will hurt the fetus – no chemo mother will die
7. what happens when a mentally disabled girl is raped/ taken advantage of or just has sex and end up pregnant?
the list goes on but thats all i can think about now
Again, putting my past to a side for a bit, I wouldn;t dream of imposing my ideas onto someone else whether it is regarding abortion, divorce, euthanasia or buying your next puppy.
to the people that think they will never do an abortion – Well, I guess you wont know until you need one
Mela D
First and foremost call me David, 34 is still young and dynamic and in the prime of life!!! Ahem!
“I believe there is a need for better sex education at secondary level. Teenagers need to be more aware of what is happening. Proper use of contraceptives should be promoted – i know it goes against the chruch but hell it can prevent so many pregnancies and STDs.”
That is putting it very mildly! We have practically no sex education and the Church really shoots itself in the foot in this. It pisses me off so much that the government doesn’t F*&^%$G impose sex education on every child in Malta, whether the Church or their parents have anything to say! I was officially thought how a woman gets pregnant at age 15. FIFTEEN!!! Can you imagine any 15 year old not knowing half the things about sex and imagining the other! Needless to say noting on contraception!
Quite frankly I don’t claim to have all the answers to your questions because they do pose a dilemma to any catholic. With a ectopic pregnancy for example we know the foetus will die anyway. D, I don’t have all the answers which is one other reason why I don’t impose my beliefs on anyone (even if I could which I can’t). Also as a man I can (obviously) never be pregnant so can never fully understand any woman’s situation!
But you brought up a good point, sex education can help reduce the number of (problematic) pregnancies, even though obviously not eliminate, and GOL and their cronies had better start hankering for something like that before being such sanctimonious imposers!
Sorry David!
issa tghallimt :P
Those questions pose a dilemma not just to any catholic but to any human being i think….I am 23 , i remember PSE which i believe now its called PSD in school…it was form 4 – i think 15 – when we were approached from our 60 year old teacher about sex and ‘boys’ as she put it. we had already learnt some things from internet ( god bless it) peers and family. to put it lightly it was a 1 hour lesson why we shouldnt have sex before marriage and how dirty we would be if we let ‘boys’ touch us. it was no way how to tackle the subject but anyways….Parents play an important part in this subject too…. in no way did my parents preparing me for these things even though now we talk quite freely about things! imma go figure….i am not saying every 16 year old that gets pregnant should abort or every girl that gets raped should but at least the option is there. what i can’t stand is the stigma in malta, the finger pointing, it tepspis fil widna…ghax huma kollha qaddisin!
and GOL have a very slim chance of getting that thing passed into our laws…. not everyone is as closed minded as our friend Miriam (im hoping …)
D,
“what i can’t stand is the stigma in malta, the finger pointing, it tepspis fil widna…ghax huma kollha qaddisin!”
Oh yes, definitely, that’s another very valid point. I think another way to “fight” abortion is to encourage (not pressurize I stress) the person to have the baby, by making it as easy as possible and fighting this damn finger pointing and gossiping we Maltese excel at!
“Those questions pose a dilemma not just to any catholic but to any human being” Yes of course, I didn’t mean it in that sense, my apologies!
David Buttigieg
“We have practically no sex education and the Church really shoots itself in the foot in this. It pisses me off so much that the government doesn’t F*&^%$G impose sex education on every child in Malta, whether the Church or their parents have anything to say!”
Calm down. :) D must have gone to a Church school because State schools are much more open about the topic.My wife teaches PSD in a Junior Lyceum and sex education is part of the curriculum practically from Form 1 to 5. Contraception to avoid pregnancy is done in Form 3 (and includes condoms) and as a way of avoiding STIs in Form 4. Teenage pregnancies are done in Form 4 too but you have to understand that teenagers rarely become pregnant because of lack of information – sexual intercourse is often done on the spur of the moment, sometimes under the influence of alcohol, and if they do not happen to have a condom available they will still go ahead and hope for the best.At any rate, we should not automatically associate abortions with teenagers.
[Daphne – There’s no link between abortion and lack of information on contraception, anyway. Abortions are frequent where there is plenty of this kind of information, and anyway, most abortions are carried out on older women, in their 20s and 30s, who very well know what contraception is. They either didn’t use it, or it failed – or they hoped for the best, as Antoine says.]
I think a more pressing issue than abortion is the laissez faire attitude to sex the teens have. I have daily contact with 19-23 year old female minimum wage earners and am constantly astonished with the stories/issues I hear. Really and truly generazjoni ta meqrudin
[Daphne – That’s what our parents probably said about us. But on a more realistic note – Philip Carabot, who heads the STD clinic, gave an interview about this subject and he expressed the same concerns. Lots of the young people sleeping around have no idea what an STD is, or think that there are obvious signs that they’d notice on the other person – huge boils around the genitals, maybe. The real problem is that Malta skipped a crucial stage of social development, probably more than one. We went straight from social repression to a complete opening-up of society without that transitional stage that western European society went through in the 1960s, 1970s and even 1980s. In simple terms, we went straight from the 1950s to, in the late 1990s, roughly where Western Europe was in the early 1980s. Socially, it was the equivalent of what happens when you suddenly give someone who has been a pauper all his life a huge amount of money – the ‘lottery winner’ syndrome.]
just to point out Antoine: no, I went to Sir Adrian Dingli, a government school – maybe your wife is an exception to the rule, but I clearly remember my once in a week PSE lessons. I am not blaming what happened to me on the PSE lessons or lack of. but rather as a point of improvement. The information about STDs that I got from school was when I took up biology in Form 3, but maybe things changed since I left..I hope they did.
[Daphne – You know, if there were a culture of reading teen magazines and young women’s magazines in Malta – there isn’t – there wouldn’t be this sort of problem. Those magazines were the main source of information for me and my friends. They still contain an absolute wealth of the kinds of things that teenagers and people in their early 20s need to know, and though they are presented as entertainment, and lots of parents disapprove of them, they are actually very enlightening. Magazines like that perform a very important role in society, but Maltese society believes that magazines are a waste of money, that they’re ‘comics’ and that if you are going to read anything, you should read a book instead. But magazines that come in from the ‘outside world’ are a lifeline and very important when it comes to keeping us informed.]
I call it “Mill ghonella ghat tanga” syndrome
No it’ true. There are other sources of information apart from school. I think apart from educating the younger generation one needs to focus on the present and the aging one. They need to be more aware that these things happen. And that just because these things are happening, it doesn’t mean society is doomed or that we all lost our morality.
I do not believe the abortion should be used as a method of contraceptives. However at least the morning after pill should be made avaibable asap. Also it shouldn’t be something you buy over the counter like paracetamol.
“However at least the morning after pill should be made avaibable asap. Also it shouldn’t be something you buy over the counter like paracetamol.”
Well, the need to go see a doctor to get a prescription first would require to rename it to the couple-of-days-after pill and it would kind of defeat the purpose.
A.A. I don’t know about the laissez faire attitude to sex. It sounds like a laissez faire attitude generally. Whatever happened to the idea of keeping yourself informed?
@ Pat: Well, I didn’t know that going to the doctor is so much of a hassle…I mean you go to the pharmacy, he checks you out, prescribes it, you go to the pharmacist and they give you the pill… not longer than an hour ( not taking into consideration queues!). Do we have Family Planning Clinic or something similar in Malta? What if the pill has side effects with other medication? what if medical conditions (high blood pressure, diabetes… I’m not in the medical profession but these are just questions that pop in my head) interfer with its course?
@ Corinne Vella
The people I am talking about are a demonstration of the complete failure of the education system. Mostly they are semi literate in maltese only and even so can hardly follow a simple instruction. Sadly I see and interview potential employees which can hardly comprehend simple questions and give coherent answers.
Also their money management skills are non existent, spending their minimum wage on hair extension, nail extensions, red bull and tattoos then remaining hungry (literally) towards the end of the month because they have no cash left.
The ignorance is even more in sexual matters. I had to lecture a 22 year old, who got pregnant after knowing her boyfriend for 4 months on what is happening inside her and what she should do, she had no idea that smoking is bad for the baby.
I can go on ranting but beleive me these people are not a minority
A.A. That’s what I meant by a general laissez faire attitude. I’m more than a little fed up with the tendency to blame the system for individual failure. If an individual has any potential s/he should take some responsibility too.
D: What would you do on a Sunday when the pharmacies are closed? Clog up the emergency waiting room
[Daphne – No sex on Saturday night, then, which is the biggest day for business, apparently.]
D:
Your argument is a good argument for setting up a family planning clinic, but you still miss the point that the morning after pill have the requirement of being acquired shortly after the woman have a suspicion of conception.
I don’t know exactly what side-effects the pill have and can’t elaborate much more on whether it should be prescriptive or not for medical reasons. I will rest my case until provided with more information :)
come on ladies! why do you think it should be available without any restrictions?
and some pharmacies are open on a sunday…
Ladies,
The “Morning After” pill can actually be taken up to 3 days after the act with exactly the same effect!
Thanks David I was waiting to come home to research that as I wasn’t too sure if they would have appreciated me looking up morning after pills at work!
I still believe there should be some sort of control over this pill… Can’t have women and girls thinking they can resort to it everytime they have unsafe sex.
Hi Daphne
On this issue, I really agree with you. What I would add is that organisations such as Gift of Life instead of trying to bully politicians so that the Constitution is amended in accordance with their view, should instead inform themselves about the various reasons of why women decide to do an abortion. In my opinion, if our politicians include the suggested clause in the Constitution they would be doing one of the greatest mistakes in history. About a year ago some people where I used to work were spreading a petition in this respect and I did not sign it and made my reasons very clear.
[Daphne – I imagine a lot of people regret signing that petition now that they really know what it’s all about. Last year my friend called me from a fund-raising bridge party attended mainly by housewives. She said that Paul Vincenti had arrived to give a spiel about how evil abortion is, and then asked those present to sign his petition ‘against abortion’. All the ladies there either agreed with alacrity (because it was ‘against abortion’) or felt pressured into doing so because everyone was watching and they would feel like baby-killers or abortionists if they didn’t. My friend didn’t sign, and he wanted to know why not.]
It would be good if gift of life and others start to make serious studies on why women decide to an abortion.
Then start to improve educating women and the public, so perhaps less people will do so (abort).
I’m against abortion personally but I’m all for an educational approach against it. Not convinced forcing people works, it usually backfires.
D: All pharmacies are closed on Sunday afternoon, which is when most young people wake up.
Corinne Vella : corinne please…. if you think that you might need the morning after pill, sleep will be the last thing on your mind….qed tipprova ssib ix-xaghra fl’ghagina issa…
D: D, please. If I only speak about the morning after pill because I need it, then that would apply to you too, wouldn’t it?
You’re not making any sort of sense when on the one hand you say that the morning after pill should be available but on the other hand you say that it doesn’t matter that a dispensary is closed when you might need it.
I’m saying that because the morning after pill doesnt need to be taken the morning after as was already pointed out before! If you need it the sunday morning it can wait till the monday and so on….
What I said what that it should be controlled. Otherwise we would be going from one extreme to the other. A doctor should prescribe it. Or else do it how they do it abroad – from a family planning clinic where people are trained exactly to deal with the situations, which is something we (unfortunately) don’t have.