Letters | Sunday, 15 February 2009

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The President supports the right to life campaign

In an interview with the President of Malta on Sunday, the 18th of January 2009, Matthew Vella, interviewed Dr Edward Fenech Adami and may have given your readers the false impression that the President of Malta is against the +9 right to life campaign. This is not the case.
Unfortunately, Mr Vella did nothing to explain the difference between two different proposals.
The +9 campaign seeks an amendment of article 33 of the Constitution of Malta. As it stands, the article gives all persons the right to life without being clear if life begins at conception. The +9 campaign seeks an amendment of the article to guarantee that the unborn child is also given the right to life from conception up to birth and beyond and not just to “born” persons. The amendment would at the same time remove any exceptions to the right to life such as in the case of capital punishment.
The entrenchment proposal as suggested by Dr. Tonio Borg is not the same as the +9 right to life campaign. This was a proposal to entrench into the Constitution of Malta the law making abortion a crime in Malta (Chapter 9 of the Laws of Malta). The entrenchment proposal met with some initial support and became rather contentious later on with arguments for and against. Eventually, in 2005 the entrenchment proposal lost support in place of another proposal. This is the 9 right to life campaign. All the political parties were informed about this proposal.
Mr Vella did not explain to your readers, that Gift of Life never campaigned for Dr Borg’s entrenchment proposal and never bothered to explain that the two proposals are not the same.
The interview ended with Mr Vella focusing on his surprise (or delight) that President of Malta was not in favour of the entrenchment proposal. As a result, some readers may have been misled and concluded that the President must also therefore be against the +9 right to life campaign.
When Gift of Life met the President of Malta in 2007, Dr Fenech Adami made it clear that he disagreed with the entrenchment proposal put forward by Dr Tonio Borg. Gift of Life agreed with the President.
The President does agree, with the concept of the +9 right to life campaign. The President actually made this very clear to Mr Vella, even though this was veiled, when in the interview he said “I think we should clarify matters here. That there should be Constitutional protection of the embryo from life’s inception, I think it’s an interpretation of what already exists in the Constitution… to have a defense of the person, with all its human rights, from the moment of conception, I agree and I add that it would not be something new in the Constitution. It would only make clear what is already there.”
President makes it clear that he does not agree with the entrenchment of the criminal code “If you ask me whether there should be a prohibition of abortion in Constitution, or as proposed an entrenchment of the Criminal Code’s provisions on abortion, I don’t agree with that.”

Paul Vincenti
Gift of Life
Mosta

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