The pregnancy police
A most unfortunate proposal made by the government, which deeply prejudices the rights of women of reproductive age, has been backed most unexpectedly by a member of the Movement of Progressives.
Worse still, she is a woman.
I would have expected this kind of retrograde thinking from the deputy prime minister, Tonio Borg, and from the chairman of parliament’s Social Affairs Committee, Edwin Vassallo.
But I did not expect it from a young woman MP on the Opposition benches.
Justyne Caruana has clearly not thought the matter through, for she is being disloyal to her own gender.
I cannot say that the stance of these three people is due to an insufficiency of thinking skills.
It might be the case with Edwin Vassallo and Justyne Caruana, but it can’t be so with Tonio Borg, who prides himself on his familiarity with human rights law and constitutional law.
And yet he sees nothing intrinsically wrong with a proposal that would allow any man to stop any woman of reproductive age from leaving the country if he claims that she is carrying his child and that when she is overseas she might abort it.
This proposal is beyond shocking.
Its proponents seek to brush aside the profound human rights issues involved by fixating instead on the (actual or potential) foetus.
They imagine that if they get us going about the need to save at all costs a foetus from abortion, then we will ignore the residual horrors implied in keeping a woman captive until she gives birth.
Let’s leave aside the issues of European Union membership and of freedom of movement. Let’s leave aside, too, the human rights issues at stake.
And let’s concentrate on the practicalities of doing this.
There are two facts which have to be determined before a woman is prevented from leaving the country until she gives birth – because obviously, a simple allegation by a man leaves the way right open for abuse, in the same way that the domestic violence laws are now repeatedly abused by persons making false or vindictive reports against their spouses.
The police, apparently, receive many hundreds of these false or vindictive reports every year, but are still obliged to take the ‘accused’ to court, or so they say, because the law does not allow for discretion even if there is clearly no case, no medical certificate, no testimony, and no evidence, log-jamming the Family Court and creating a great deal of inconvenience for all involved.
But that’s another scandalous situation, to be discussed at some other stage.
These two facts are, first, that the woman is indeed pregnant, and second, that the child has been fathered by her accuser.
So let’s say a man goes to the police and says that Miss or Mrs X is planning to leave the country, that she is pregnant with his child, and that she ‘might’ have an abortion while gone.
So what happens next? Do the police arrest her and force her to urinate on a pregnancy tester (will a policewoman be obliged to hold it in the appropriate place?) so as to determine whether she really is pregnant?
Let’s say they do so, by circumventing any number of privacy laws, human rights provisions, and so on.
They then have to determine that the foetus has been fathered by the piece of work who reported her. This means forcibly subjecting the foetus (and inevitably, the mother) to an invasive and risky procedure to extract a DNA sample, followed by the taking, under duress, of a DNA sample from the woman.
Presumably, her accuser will put his money where his mouth is and volunteer his own DNA sample. Then all three DNA samples will have to be tested and matched, and somebody will have to pay for all this.
I don’t know if your mind is working in concert with mine, but if it is, it will be bumping along right now over all the horrifying human rights violations wrapped up in what, to the simpler or more conservative minds in our society, looks like a wonderful way of safeguarding foetuses from abortion.
There has been a parallel proposal to this one, and it is equally disturbing.
This is for the issuing of care orders for foetuses – except, of course, the proposers don’t call them foetuses but ‘unborn children’. An equation is made between a care order for a child (there is no such thing as a ‘born child’) and a care order for a foetus.
Yet this equation is clearly false.
A child under a care order is removed from its parent and literally, ‘taken into care’. A foetus cannot be separated from its mother – not unless the proposers of this fatuous suggestion wish to do the very thing they campaign against, and abort it.
So a care order for a foetus is effectively a policing order for a pregnant woman.
This would bring us close to cultural norms from which we usually distance ourselves most forcefully, and to which we like to believe we are so superior.
That adults are free to destroy themselves or to refuse treatment for ailments or addictions is one of our cherished civil liberties.
Treatment can be forced by the courts on a child against the parents’ wishes – because parents cannot refuse medical treatment on a child’s behalf.
But medical treatment can never be forced on anybody who is over the age of 18. Once we have reached that age, we are free to let ourselves rot, to refuse medical care, to kill ourselves with drink, cigarettes and even illegal drugs, without having treatment forced upon us.
This new proposal harks back to the days when women, and especially pregnant women, had the legal status of minors – for it seeks to make it legal to force treatment for drug, drink or tobacco addiction on pregnant women.
I think we all know by now that no such treatment can work unless it is voluntary. You can’t force an alcoholic to stop drinking or a chain-smoker to stop smoking. It has to be their decision.
But wait – there is a way to stop them, isn’t there?
It runs along the same lines as preventing pregnant women from leaving the country in case they have an abortion. To stop them smoking, drinking or taking drugs, what you do is this: you lock them up in a room with barred windows and a steel-clad door, with just a mattress on the floor so that they can’t kill themselves with pieces of furniture when they get withdrawal symptoms, and no clothes on either so that they can’t do any creative damage with those.
If the whole thing were not so very appalling, it would be ridiculous.
Progressive? The whole country appears to be suffering from a really bad case of arrested development, with politicians on both sides of the house competing for the title of Mullah of the Year, while fools cheer on the sidelines.
Scratch that Mullah of the Year. Much of this thinking would not go amiss in provincial China. They’re a bit confused there, too, about human rights and the status of women.
Become pregnant and hey presto! You’re a child yourself – a born one, of course.
This article is published in The Malta Independent on Sunday today.
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Locking pregant women in a room might not be enough to avoid abortion or harm to the foetus. To achieve their noble aim the pregnancy police may need to use further restrains, with the ‘patient’s’ hands chained to the bed, sedation and force feeding, and I’m not sure that I’m covering all risks either.
After further careful consideration, I think that straitjackets and full-time CCTV monitoring would be a must. After all, the aim justifies the means. No problem with the CCTV aspect. It can be privatised as with the warden’s educational service.
My sentiments exactly. In fact I said as much in my comment about the article inquestion, on the Times’s website.
However, all is not well in the health sector. After the monumental expenditure on Mater Dei, doctors are seriously worried that patients there are at risk. See:
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20100214/local/doctors-complain-of-hospital-bed-shortage
It’s not only doctors. My wife (we live apart, for those that do not know) told me that she felt compelled to take out private medical insurance because of the ‘chaotic situation’ at Mater Dei. This is bloody rich, coming on top of the thousands of millions of euros expended in the health sector recently.
Yet, our legislators waste their time in discussing the necessity of pregnancy police.
Sometimes I despair.
Can you really blame me for being interested in footie? At least there’s usually something positive going on there.
[Daphne – I don’t agree with Rita on this one, Tim. I have no private medical insurance and never have done. It makes far more sense to put aside the equivalent of the premium and use that for private medical care if you must. Private medical insurance would make sense somewhere like Britain or Italy, where state medical care is well, not that great. I say ‘if you must’ because I and my children have always used the state health care service even when the hospital was St Luke’s. I think the medical care is incomparable, even though everything else was then uncomfortable. It is certainly anything but uncomfortable now. I use private medical care for routine check-ups and for minor things,and what I pay for these is far, far less than what I would have to pay for an insurance premium to get them ‘free’.]
The focus of my comment isn’t on whether Rita is right or not but the fact that whilst the one and only general hospital, after huge investment and with huge running costs to the taxpayer, can’t cope with demand legislators are discussing ridiculous propositions in the health sector. It just goes to show how out of touch with reality some politicians (and others) can be.
I, and probably many others have the same opinion as Daphne when it comes to medical care. Why should we pay for private insurance when we can get the same or worse treatment in a private hospital? Even in private hospitals one has to wait, not to mention the quality of the service.
It’s not viable to go for physiotherapy in the morning and waste the whole afternoon when one can pay EUR14 and get better service in the evening in your locality.
I agree 100% on the premium part – you are better off putting this money aside and using it for private medical care if required.
As for the medical care at the state hospital, I think one would surely be unfair in calling it chaotic. I have worked both at St Luke’s and Mater Dei, and can assure all that the service for is much better for both patients and health care professionals.
As for my colleagues’ complaints on bed shortage, the problem stems from at least two major areas.
Social cases are not made to pay for the beds they take up (80 beds are the equivalent of 3.5 wards). One has to keep in mind that Karen Grech Hospital is full, and this was supposed to take up the social case problem of St Luke’s. Again, here the major culprit is the lack of payment for such beds. If relatives were made to pay even a minimal amount per day (e.g. 10 Euros), they would either be ready to pay (if they really cannot take care of their relatives) or else make arrangements to take them home. Some of the patients require minimal care and thus could live quite well at home.
The second problem is excessive admission due tot doctors being excessively over-cautious and not wanting to take risks. Apart from knowing this through experience at my place of work, I can show this through first hand experiences.
I had a relative who had some central abdominal pain, occurring at night, with very minor risk of its being cardiac in origin. He was rushed to hospital by the visiting health centre GP. At the Emergency Department he was quickly seen and an ECGg taken – the result was normal.
Nevertheless he was admitted, went through a list of tests including various blood and was kept for two nights in hospital and then discharged with a clean bill of health. Though he was treated like a first class guest and he had only praise for the staff, he did occupy a bed for two nights quite uselessly. Young doctors need to improve their clinical acumen and not put all this faith in technological tests.
Another example: I required a minor procedure on my forearm – basically almost an outpatient one but one which requried the use of an operating theatre. I was utterly surprised that the ward staff insisted in putting me on a bed and wheel-chairing me to the theatre. Again, it is first-class treatment and one can feel like a king, but is it necessary (not to comment on the strange feeling of being on a wheelchair when you can walk freely)?
Apart from this, the other complaints of waiting lists can also be explained wither from the sheer (and sometimes) excessive use of technological tests (e.g. MRI – and these people work till late hours every day) or else due to the actions of some consultants that is unfortunately very difficult to control.
I agree with Daphne’s point of view about private medical insurance. When I had one and visited my ENT specialist, I was charged double the usual price, since I was getting the money back from the insurance. Every year the premium became more expensive. By paying for insurance I was also contributing to this abuse. The only solution to this abuse is an increase in the premiums.
Apart from charging double or triple, some of these specialists know when they’re on a good run and they keep you returning for more ‘tests’ and more expensive medication.
You will also find yourself bandied about from one consultant to another for ‘second opinions’ and this vicious circle is extremely hard to break because you always feel sickly.
This happened to me with my young son who was under ‘treatment’ for a whole year when the only thing wrong with him was the medicines being fed to him by these consultants.
@ Carlos : a young friend of mine felt a pain in his side, went to a specialist who recommended him to a surgeon who ‘diagnosed’ a probable cancer. He told my friend that it was an urgent matter and an appointment was fixed in a private hospital so that he could be operated on by the said surgeon.
When they see you that you are panicking and that you have enough money they empty your pockets in no time. To cut a long story short, the doctors at Mater Dei found some fat accumulated in some part of his bowel. The cost of the ‘rip off operation’ by the unscrupulous surgeon was going to be something over 1,400 euro.
@ John Schembri
If the case that you mentioned is true, it might be a case of malpractice. No surgeon can diagnose internal cancer just by a manual examination.
As a minimum one would need to have at least an xray and ultrasound and today an MRI would also be indicated.
Daphne: seems like WHO rates the Italian and British system quite favorably. Reading the stats proved quite disconcerting for me, considering that we’re all the time hearing of malasanità on italian TV.
That said, I think that Italy has an image problem, as notwithstanding the corrupt system there are many who strive to make things work against all odds.
I am not worried in the least bit about the proposal ever coming into effect. Not as members of the EU and several other Human Rights organisations Malta is a member of.
What has me flabbergasted is that the people who proposed and support this seem to be totally oblivious to the sheer ridiculousness of ever proposing and supporting it in the first place !
This goes beyond blind religious fanaticism. It goes deep into the territory of utter stupidity and plain madness.
I am therefore bemused by the lengths to which people will go to please the Mullahs, including making themselves ridiculous.
I am a practising Catholic and I am against abortion but I find these proposals insulting, patronizing and chauvinistic to the extreme.They are also fundamentalist and medieval at the same time.
I would invite all women with a modicum of self-respect to oppose these proposals with all their might in their environments and, if it comes to that, challenge the law in the appropriate fora, including the ECHR.
Above all, these proposals show how women are still regarded in our society.
Justyne gave us a good example of maternal love and dedication for new-borns. Remember her canvassing from the labour ward of Gozo General Hospital just before the election? Remember her gloating about canvassing from the car whilst breast feeding? Remember her chasing Sant a few days after she gave birth?
I cannot understand why this wave of fundamentalism is hitting us from all sides….”spiritual preparation” for il-migja tar-raghaj?
Is Justyne the MP who made a strident, hysterical speech against all Naltionalists during an MLP/PL conference? Just trying to place her in focus.
I just heard Mr Vassallo on Radio 101, who explained and made clear what he meant when he was reported about this matter.
In my words, he said that Sedqa had some cases of drug addicts who are also expecting a child but who do not want to follow a drug rehabilitation programme.
Sedqa social workers approached Mr Vassallo with their worries about the health of the unborn children of these drug addicts. They suggested amongst other things a care order for the unborn child. This issue is still open for discussion in the Parliamentary Social Affairs Committee.
I would transfer the whole of SEDQA to Comino and train them in the pig-breeding business for the good of all.
Aha. So you’re not all that uninterested in the micro-management of small Mediterranean states. Taking a break from policing the Great Satan, are you?
Kev, there is no more pig-breeding business on Comino – the whole thing was transferred to Brussels.
Your article is uncharacteristically replete with mistaken facts. The police do not act at all when (and if ever) reports that pregnant women are about to leave to undergo abortion procedures are lodged.
[Daphne – I am afraid you are wrong. And because I know you are a Labour voter, I doubly regret to inform you that the Movement of Progressives’ deputy leader boasted only a few days ago that he is the only lawyer in Malta ever to succeed in preventing a pregnant woman from leaving the country, when her former lover, his client, accused her of planning to have an abortion while abroad.]
It is not a crime to contemplate, or even plan abortion. I’m no lawyer, but I know that a ‘mens rea’ on its own is not sufficient for a crime to be committed. i.e. there is no basis for involvement by the police.
[Daphne – I suggest you ring Toni Abela. He’s ever so proud of his achievement. He boasted about it to win brownie points with Gift of Life.]
If a prospective father feels that his parental rights are being violated by a unilateral decision of the mother to abort, he may petition to the Court (not the police) who may then issue an order prohibiting the woman from leaving the country. As far as I’m aware that has happened only once or twice in the last year.
The scenario you depict of a court jam-packed with cases instigated by vindictive males bent on harassing their erstwhile partners is entirely fictitious.
[Daphne – It is happening already, under other laws, as I have pointed out in this article.]
I have not read of any formal proposal to prohibit women from going abroad to abort their unborn child, apart from Justyne Caruana’s statement carried in the Times this morning. I stand to be corrected on this one.
It is clear that the Select Committee’s proposal for the issue of a ‘care order’, though well-meaning, is unworkable. One simply cannot stand in the way of thsoe who decide to termiante their pregnancies abroad, especially if the presumed father is in agreement or does not object.
What would be more practical is to enact legislation which establishes that the the foetus has the same rights as any born human being, and then apply the provisions of the Mental Health Act to those pregnant women WHO ARE DRUG OR ALCOHOL ADDICTS – the law as it stand allows compulsory hospitalisation is addiction is construed as a psychiatric disorder- and who do not collaborate with treatment, provided that their alcohol drug use is medically certified as serious enough to cause harm to themselves and/or to others.
Just to avoid misunderstandings: what is being proposed here would hold good only for those pregnant women who are addicted to substances, and who do not seek treatment for their dependence. Should these individuals seek to leave the country to have an abortion, they would not be stopped – unless their physical or mental state, irrespective of the pregnancy, would advise caution anyway.
Maybe you missed the essential point in the debate that triggered this one – there was no mention of the mother as a person in need of care herself.
The discussion was not of women who are taken into care and who are found to be pregnant but of women being forcibly institutionalised because when they are pregnant and their foetus is considered to be in danger.
Dr. Toni Abela’s ‘boast’ that he was the only lawyer to have succeeded in preventing a woman from flying abroad to abort her unborn child is further indication of how very few males (if any) are currently trying to stop their former partners from flying abroad to abort their unborn children.
If you could let us know where you gleaned the information that the Courts are swamped with this sort of request from, I would be glad to withdraw my statement that your article is based on the wrong facts.
[Daphne – Did anyone say that the courts are swamped with this kind of request? Nobody did. But if the law makes it possible, then yes, the courts will be swamped with cases of vindictiveness.]
By the way, I am a Labour sympathiser, not a Labour voter. Due to Labour’s attitude towards political violence and human rights in the pre-Sant days and, subsequently, their stupid stance on Europe, I have unfortunately had to cast my vote for the PN or AD more often than for Labour. With Joseph Muscat virtually promising the propoasl of divorce legislation if elected, the trend will probably continue.
@ Ms. Vella: Currently legislation permits forced treatment of severe addiction, if it is construed as a mental disorder and there is danger to the addict herself (or himself) or others.
[Daphne – Did anyone say that the courts are swamped with this kind of request? Nobody did.]
What you actually said was this: “The police, apparently, receive many hundreds of these false or vindictive reports every year, but are still obliged to take the ‘accused’ to court, or so they say, because the law does not allow for discretion even if there is clearly no case, no medical certificate, no testimony, and no evidence, log-jamming the Family Court and creating a great deal of inconvenience for all involved”.
The police cannot act on these reports – if any are indeed lodged – because the threat, intention, or the formulation in one’s mind, to commit a crime is not itself criminal. There are lawyers who frequent this blog who can bear me out on this one.
[Daphne – You are wrong. Under the provisions for domestic violence, the police are obliged to pursue the case in court without first checking whether the report is false and vindictive, without a medical certificate, and even when the person who has made the vindictive report wakes up the next morning to the full horror of what s/he has done and writes formally to the police to withdraw it, pointing out that they have no case because s/he will not testify. The statistics released recently, showing an increase in domestic violence reports/cases failed to mention that much of this increase is due to a recent change in the law which obliges the police to proceed ex ufficio, without the consent of the party who made the report. The net result is that reports which were until then vindictively made and then immediately withdrawn, causing the report to drop off the list, are now being forced through without the consent of the party involved, and then dropped in court when the party who made the report either refuses to testify or says that the report was made vindictively. This is a crazy situation – any fool could have predicted that the new law would be wide open to abuse of this nature. A law designed to protect women who are regularly beaten to a pulp by their drunken husbands and who are too scared to testify against them is being abused, because it was so badly written, by all sorts out of spite, anger and irritation.]
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20100214/opinion/what-you-see-is-what-you-dont-get
So all of you arguing this is outrageous are typical selfish women who feel that if the child is in your body it’s up to you to decide the fate of the child and the father doesn’t have equal rights to the child’s well being as the mother. Prosit. Female chauvinists on the loose.
You are quite ridiculous. Some women abort reluctantly under pressure from the father. Are we to have one set of mullahs at the departure gates carrying pregnancy testing strips and another set of mullahs checking for psychological pressure? Or would you rather drop the second lot, given that you’re a champion of a man’s right to choose, but not a woman’s?
La Redoute,
Women can currently use abortion to threaten the father that if he leaves them they will abort and kill his child. My only point is, the father has as much right to the child as the mother.
[Daphne – Not before birth, I’m afraid. This is because biology itself makes for inequality. It is the woman who carries and bears the child, not the man. In that position, women do all the work, their integral ‘person’ only is involved, and by definition men do not have equal rights. After the child is born, yes – but then they also have equal duties.]
Unless you’re a feminist sexist you should realize men and women are equal and both should have equal rights to the child. You seem to indicate that if it’s in your body it’s up to the woman to decide and not the father.
Yes I am glad it happened since that ‘thing’ (as H. P. Baxxter puts it) is now an 11 year-old child enjoying his life (and rightly so) like you and me.
[Daphne – You can’t reason that way ‘thank God it happened because now there’s a child living his life’. You might as well apply the way of thinking to every sexual encounter which doesn’t result in pregnancy – ‘oh my, if I hadn’t worn a condom there would have been a child alive today.’]
The law might look extreme and yes maybe you need to provide some proof to an allegation that a mother is pregnant, perhaps testimony from the doctor.
[Daphne – I believe that men who reason this way should be made at law to wear a sign on their foreheads saying: ‘Do not have sex with me as the consequences are dangerous.’]
What tripe. I notice you deliberately sidestep the issue of women who abort under duress. Did you notice that that point is absent from the debate? It certainly is absent from your world view.
Here we go again. The pro-life brigade assuming that everyone is “enjoying his life”.
Why all the fuss? I think this is already in practice. I know a case where the father sent a ‘marixall’ to prevent someone from travelling abroad and aborting…this case happened way back 10 years ago.
And no doubt you have only admiration for such actions.
I agree totally with what you’ve written. What is Malta coming to? Edwin Vassallo gives me the creeps when he speaks in this way. Is there even one country in the world where such things are done? The right but very difficult or almost impossible thing to do is to wage war on drug traffickers and not pregnant women!
The appropriate question is what qualifies a vendor of sexy underwear and unsexy socks to make such suggestions.
In my opinion this is a half measure, a half baked solution to there being no law regulating abortion in Malta where women and worse still, girls, with unwanted pregnancies go to Sicily to abort.
I believe that there is a fundamental difference between being against abortion and being against a law regulating abortion. Suffice it to think that since Italy enacted the law regulating abortion, the number of abortions decreased by close to 20%. These are numbers calculated on surveys, since of course no official numbers were available prior to the law coming into force, so it is well possible that women who said they never had an abortion, actually had had one and the percentage would therefore be higher.
What happens here in Italy is that when a woman seeks an abortion she goes to a public hospital, which is safer and free so that’s enough incentive to keep her away from the private ones. The first thing they do BY LAW is have her speak first to a gynae and then to a psychologist to establish the reason she is seeking an abortion.
Very often they also involve the family in the case of young girls.
They then involve the social services to offer help with the baby. They explain other options such as adoption and fostering. Next (and this I know for a fact because when I had my son i saw it happen, they take her through the maternity ward, they show her new born babies.
Very often these women change their minds. In 2008 alone, 14,000 women seeking an abortion changed their minds in the end. In fact, a few months ago the extreme pro-abortion lobby in Italy protested against this procedure saying that it was unduly influencing women to keep their pregnancies.
This as opposed to Maltese women who go to private Sicilian butchers whose only interest is cashing in on the 3,000-odd euros they charge for an abortion which they often carry out in the most questionable conditions.
Ah -and what’s more even in the fourth or fifth month of gestation with no regard to the mother’s health or the brutal murder of a five month old foetus or rather often perfectly viable baby.
I repeat I am pro life, and it is my firm belief that life begins at conception. However burying one’s head in the sand and coming up with ridiculous solutions like this silly pregnancy ‘impediment of departure’ is surely no solution.
Finally one of my closest friends in Italy some years ago found out that her husband was having an affair and that she was pregnant on the same day. Out of desperation she went to have an abortion.
The gynae with whom she had her first meeting immediately called a psychologist and their joint counselling effort had the desired effect. Her daughter is now a teenager, and fruit of a properly applied abortion law. If she were in Malta a two-day trip to Siracusa would have “taken care” of that problem without further ado.
Let’s think carefully here, and yes the means sometimes justify the end.
Such legislation would stand only as long as it’s not challenged in the European Court of Justice (in Luxembourg). Since 01.12.2009 the fundamental rights of every EU citizen fall under the jurisdiction of the ECJ.
It could be the only positive aspect for medieval pockets in the EU because, for Soviet-inspired reasons, this court generally rules against the nation state and for uniformity across the EU.
So what these oblivious Lilliputians are up to is a ridiculous exercise conditioned only by an illusion of self-governance.
This seems to emulate the Irish way of thinking, the full horror of which can be seen in the following story:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6618911.stm
I find it very hard to justify abortion, however i find it harder still to accept this country being reduced to a police state by a bunch of politician who seem hell-bent on creating bad laws.
The anti-abortion ‘movement’ in Malta is becoming ridiculous. This latest idea, especially as you interpret it – precisely – is nothing but extremism. Imbasta jghidu le ghall-abort. But at what cost?
Probably they never even think things through.
I personally do not really have an opinion on the issue, and I stand by that. But apparently it’s cool to say ‘No to abortion’ so everyone *has to* say that or join the ‘I am MALTESE and I say NO to ABORTION’ group, always on Facebook, which I find even more ridiculous. What does being Maltese has to do with it?.
And yes, I still can’t figure out why the loudest of them all happen to be almost exclusively male. Moving towards a male-dominated theocratic state if you ask me. Terrible.
*have to do with it… typo!
So let’s say a woman goes to the police and says that Mr. X is the father of her child and planning to leave the country, that she is pregnant with his child, and that he ‘might’ not support the child while gone.
They then have to determine that the child of the piece of work that reported him has actually been fathered by Mr.X
So what happens next? Do the police arrest him and force him to let blood for a paternity test (will a policeman be obliged to take it?) so as to determine whether he really is the father of the child?
Let’s say they do so, by circumventing any number of privacy laws, human rights provisions, and so on.
This means forcibly subjecting the child (besides the mother) to an invasive and risky procedure to extract a DNA sample, after having taken, under duress, a DNA sample from the man.
When I first read about Justyne Caruana’s proposal on the paper I honestly felt as if I wanted to sit down and cry. I hope I am not exaggerating, but it honestly felt like a personal attack in some ways.
What is happening to this country?
As a woman I was so shocked, so utterly shocked to hear another of my gender come up with something so misogynist. Then again, girls in Malta are from a young age brainwashed and guilt-tripped into thinking that abortion is evil, sickening, murder etc and any woman who undergoes the procedure is to be condemned for life (former Catholic schoolgirl speaking from experience here).
So perhaps with this in mind it is not so shocking that many Maltese women are still thinking like these even in today’s day and age.
I do not think that I would have an abortion, but I wouldn’t ever dream of imposing my beliefs or opinions on someone else. This is why it is called pro-CHOICE. I dislike calling those on the other side of the argument ‘pro-lifers’ because they do not care about the lives of women. I call them anti-choicers.
‘Progressive’ party, my foot.
Can you have a care order for something that is not recognised as a person in the legal sense?
[Daphne – Precisely. No, you can’t.]
Then why is it even being debated in the first place? Or is this the typical Maltese way of doing politics: tug at the heartstrings and achieve the impossible.
Typical southern Mediterranean attitude towards women! Quo vadis Malta?
Il-lostra kemm hawn bravi!
I am not one who is in favour of abortion, but I also think that there are cases and cases. Who am I to judge? But whoever came up with the idea of policing pregnant or supposedly pregnant women deserves to be castrated, and any woman who agrees with this idiot isn’t a woman at all. After all that women have fought for to be equal to men! What is Justine playing at?
I read recently that the UK have some similar law – is it possible that it’s true?
[Daphne – Of course not.]
It’s a real pity to hear about such archaic proposals, especially coming from Dr Tonio Borg – a human rights’ lecturer. Article 170 of the Civil Code speaks of curatorship (kuratur ad ventrem), which in a way can give rise to a form of policing over pregnant women.
This article states that: ‘If at the time of the death of a husband without issue, the wife declares that she is pregnant, the court may, upon the demand of any person interested, appoint a curator ad ventrem with a view to preventing any supposition of birth, or substitution of child, and administering the property up to the day of the birth, under such directions as the court may deem it proper to give’.
Yet this article came into force in 1868, at a time when succession rights were deemed sacred throughout the European continent. For various and obvious reasons, what is being proposed in 2010 in this regard is utterly ridiculous.
What if the pregnant woman to be detained holds a British passport, for example? In England the procurement of abortion is not prohibited and EU citizens enjoy the freedom of movement, so how on earth is this law going to apply in practice? Are we going to detain foreigners until the investigations are over (DNA tests, etc)?
[Daphne – A woman doesn’t need a foreign passport to leave the country. A Maltese passport is sufficient. And she’s free to have an abortion in London if she wants to, because as you pointed out, it’s legal there and crimes don’t follow us from one country to another. In other words, it’s illegal for a person of whatever passport to have an abortion in Malta, but it’s perfectly legal for a Maltese person to have an abortion where abortion is legal. This simple principle frustrates people like Gift of Life and, unable to find a way round it, they have suggested this abusive measure.]
And what about the 48hr rule? Moreover, it’s very dangerous to obtain a sample, for DNA purposes, from the womb. The risk is so high that professionals refuse to perform such tests.
To my mind Tonio Borg still believes that ‘conservatism’ attracts voters, and because of this obsolete ideology he is putting our freedom at stake. What about the nice rhetoric about EU and the four freedoms? Alas, it is precisely due to such politicians that Maltese laws have ‘remained’ archaic and do not reflect the current social milieu. Well, at least those detained will have a right to consult a lawyer now.
So long as you are domiciled and resident in Malta, you carry Maltese rights and obligations where ever you go.
[Daphne – ‘As far as you know’: this is a fundamental issue, and not an opinion on whether the cake tastes good or not, so I suggest you check and discover that you are wrong. Your rights and obligations are not covered by the same laws which govern crime. Criminal law is territorial, with very, very few exceptions. If you murder somebody in Britain, for example, you have to be extradited to Britain to face trial. You cannot be tried in Malta for a murder you committed elsewhere. It’s the same thing with abortion. If abortion were illegal in Britain, and you had one there, you would have to be tried there, not in Malta – let alone when it’s not illegal in Britain.]
As far as I know, if the authorities have proof that a Maltese couple decide to have an abortion, even if in a foreign country which permits abortion, they would be prosecuted.
[Daphne – That’s for planning to have an abortion, not for having one. The planning would have to be done here, within Maltese territory. And that’s never going to happen because, whatever the law says or not, it’s a little bit hard to drag a couple to court and charge them with planning to abort. They will refuse to testify against one another, which is their legal right, and there the case falls.]
The same principle applies for euthanasia. It’s not a case that Malta doesn’t offer the service so you may seek it elsewhere. It is illegal under our law as would be the selling of drugs in a foreign state while on holiday for instances.
[Daphne – You are VERY confused. Of course you can go to a Swiss clinic for a planned death. Nothing and no one can stop you. However, if relatives accompany you, they can be charged with aiding and abetting – for that part of the aiding and abetting which takes place here, within Maltese territory. Selling drugs while on holiday – assuming the drugs are illegal in your destination of choice, you would be committing a crime THERE, not here in Malta. And so you would be charged THERE, not here. Do you have a vote?]
hehe i’m just putting in my contribution – this is a discussion..
Anyway, Article 5(1)(d) (Persons subject to prosecution) of the Criminal code say:
‘…a criminal action may be prosecuted in Malta – against any citizen of Malta or permanent resident in Malta who in any place or on board any ship or vessel or on board any aircraft wherever it may be shall have become guilty of any…offence against the person of a citizen of Malta or of any permanent resident in Malta’
[Daphne – You are quoting things out of context, and worse, mixing up the territoriality of the crime with the citizenship of the person. You are a Maltese citizen. Abortion is illegal in Malta. You go to Britain. Abortion is legal there. You have an abortion. You come back home. You cannot be prosecuted. Why? Because you didn’t commit a crime. Abortion is legal in Britain. Now let’s look at it the other way round. You are a British subject. Abortion is legal in Britain. You live in Malta. Abortion is illegal here. Instead of going back home to Britain to have an abortion, where it is legal, you decide to have it here in Malta, after finding a doctor willing to risk imprisonment and being struck off the register. You have the abortion. You are found out and prosecuted – because despite coming from a country where abortion is legal, you chose to have that abortion where it is not legal.
Ships, planes, vessels and the prosecution of a citizen in his own country for crimes committed thereon – that’s international law. It has nothing to do with territorial jurisdiction.]
You may feel totally convinced about what you are saying. However, there does exist an argument against it just based on this single article of the law.
[Daphne – This is not about conviction, Jon, but about fact. I really despair at what is happening in Malta, which is fast becoming a place where ‘conviction’ and ‘this is my opinion’ are seen as adequate substitutes for fact.]
My understanding of what that article is saying is that Maltese citizens or permanent residents of Malta are protected even if abroad from acts committed against them by other Maltese citizens or residents which violate Maltese law.
[Daphne – No. Speak to a lawyer.]
This cannot be strictly about fact (if as we are seeing from our little debate): two people understand this law so differently; let alone what our judges and magistrates would come up with should the matter come before them.
[Daphne – Yours is a lay interpretation, Jon. In a way, so is mine – the difference being that I’ve studied these matters.]
Dear Daphne
Maybe the people on this blog may wish to read this too.
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20100214/religion/unguilded-silence
*shrugs* – Of course it’s only just another of the new series of thought crimes being introduced in our system.
I think that this issue is too complex to just write a few lines stating the position taken by any individual. Abortion is a word that sounds familiar to ‘first degree murder’. That’s the outlook on one side of the coin.
However, when one turns the coin over, one sees a diverse outlook on the matter. Shame on those perverse individuals who hide behind the cloak of the court of laws to get their twisted revenge on their partner. However I think that shame and gross irresponsibility has to befall the irresponsible person/s who….for a ‘few hours of adult fun and svog’ create a foundation for The Gift of Life. The Gift of Life is PRECIOUS.
Unfortunately this proposal was put forward at a pro-life event and thus it was quickly linked to abortion.
In reality the proposal would be dealing with drug addiction during pregnancy (though I can understand that if taken to the extreme, abortion can be considered as harm to the foetus and hence could be a reason for a care order).
In the UK, the 1989 Children Act is also being invoked when “substance misuse or the mother’s behaviour or lifestyle is likely to cause significant harm to the baby, before or after it is born”. So in a way we are not re-inventing the wheel.
The problem with this act and other acts (especially those in the US where a mother can be charged with a range of offences, including child abuse, child neglect, child endangerment, and delivery of drugs to a minor) is the risk that action of the law becomes punitive rather than of assistance to the mother. This could result in a smaller number of mothers seeking help or a reluctance among the medical profession to abide by the law.
So though in principle such laws might have good intentions, we also know that the road to hell is paved with those. So in a way I believe that (as usual) Edwin Vassallo has blurted out something prematurely. Such matters should first be discussed by professionals and only then passed on to politicians.
I hope that Maltese politicians do not get hold of draft legislation at present being discussed in the Dutch parliament. This draft law would basically identify women who are deemed by the state to be unfit mothers and then sentenced to take contraception for a prescribed period of two years. And guess what, this draft law has been presented by a socialist (of the progressive type). It has been compared to the science fiction film “Minority Report” .
Snoopy, do you have more details about the UK cases you mentioned – some links perhaps?
I’m asking through professional interest.
In the UK each County Council has to appoint a Safeguarding Children Board. So if you search with this title you shoudl pick up a numer of links.
The London one has a good manual of procedures on line. the link is the following (it is quite large around 8Mb):
http://www.londonscb.gov.uk/files/2010/procedures/london_cp_procedures_v.3__15.02.10.pdf
I have also uploaded a scientific report about a particular case of a mother with a history of drug abuse. This paper highlights the ethical, social and health problems when one has to act in such a situation. It makes one think and I believe that such papers should be openly discussed in the parliamentary committees so that such problems can be fully discussed prior to decisions or premature statements being made by politicians.
You can access this here: http://www.4shared.com/file/222733584/aec6f7be/vulnerable_child_unborn.html
If you do not succeed, please give me your email address and I shall email it to you.
Every foetus should be forced to open a Facebook account. That way its status can be tracked constantly till birth.
A question for Justyne Caruana – for, clearly, the men concerned with the proposal will see things differently:
If your daughter, when older, were to become pregnant – especially at a young age – as a result of rape, would you still feel the same way?
And would anybody believe whatever she replied to this question?
It’s not a question of how Dr. Justyne Caruana would feel in a particular, hypothetical situation. Morality is not based on feelings.
Of course life is a gift, especially when you have half-brained men, for amusement, who believe that life begins when one just thinks about having sex. Is it that hard to live your life and let everybody else live theirs?
Why is libertarianism so hard to grasp?
Tghidilhomx hekk Len, ghax jahsbuk qed titkellem dwar il-libertinagg – u dik tfisser ghalihom sagrilecci u pastazati.
Otherwise, even those who know what libertarianism is fail to grasp the fundamentals of a real free market and an evolved free society because they have unknowingly lived inside a box.
One can boast of a perceptive and observant mind, but perceptions and observations are defined by the size of that box and its interior decorations.
This sort of illusion has worked well under Nazism and communism. And it has also served ‘social democracy’ and capitalism, which have nothing to do with a free market, where the State’s main role is to protect society from violence, fraud, breaches of contract, monopolies, oligarchies, cartels and money debasers. Today, these cartels rule the globe, especially the West. It is one reason why money is debt and why credit is created out of thin air. It is also why all nations are indebted to the point of collapse.
‘This is because biology itself makes for inequality. ‘
Daphne so if men are biologically stronger we can do what we want with women?
Argument bazwi tieghek jiddispjacini. I will keep to my word. The father should have equal rights as the mother even before birth.
[Daphne – You miss the point, Mark. You cannot have equality of rights when there is no way that you can have equality of responsibilities. The two go hand in hand: rights and duties. Incidentally, this is not my opinion: it is a decision of the European Court of Human Rights. See my latest post on the subject.]
Hi Mark –
Women may be biologically weaker, but they sure are mentally stronger then men. One has to appreciate the fact that a woman carries the child for nine months. Let us reverse the tables for a minute – would you like to be in their shoes?
What if it is a case of rape? Would you like to raise the child of a man who raped your partner?
As I remarked in my previous comment, there must be a balance somewhere on this subject. It can’t just be a YES or a NO.
@brian
Well let us reverse the tables. If I were a woman, I don’t have to work all my life, instead I’d find a richy rich husband, offer him some good sex and make him commit himself and marry me then divorce/seperate get half his money or threaten to take custody of the child which falls on the mother, unless he pays me. Then if I commit a serious crime such as murder I put up an innocent defencless look and get 4 years jail instead of 10 to 20 years just becuase I’m a woman. You can also get paid for sex instead of paying. It’s good to be a woman, I would have loved it.
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20100216/local/brussels-warns-malta-again
Hear hear Dapne, Europe speaks about parental rights and not the mother’s right, at least Europe is not as biased and femminist as you are when it comes to equal rights for the mother and father. Or perhaps the fathers should dress up like supermen (as in the past) and go on a skyscraper to proof this point. You are overstepping your rights and simply seeking special rights for women/mothers. Admit it.