Church’s Pro-Vicar Fr Anton Gouder claims divorce-abortion link
Charlot Zahra The Church’s Pro-Vicar Anton Gouder yesterday put forward bold claims that a relationship existed between the introduction of divorce and the introduction of abortion, in a conference organised by Progett Impenn, which groups the Cana Movement, Caritas and the Diocesan Commission for the Family.
Gouder told his assembled audience – composed mainly of middle-aged men and women – that “research shows that there is a relationship between broken marriages and abortion.”
“Research conducted by the Guttmacher Institute, the research branch of the US agency mostly in favour of abortion, states that in marriage, there is less probability that children are aborted and less probability that they are abused or abandoned,” Gouder declared.
“Due to the fact that this research was made by this agency that has an interest in favour of abortion, then yes, there is a relationship between broken marriages and abortion,” the priest added.
Earlier, Gouder quoted a sentence from an article published in the Wall Street Journal in 1999 which stated that “a long-term first marriage has become a status symbol of which you are very proud”.
He explained that he had chosen that quotation from that time because ten years ago there were already a number of countries, like the United States and the United Kingdom, “where the rate of broken marriages reached the 50 per cent mark”
Even in EU countries, between 1996 and 2006 there were about 10.1 million broken marriages “which were affecting 15 million boys and girls,” Gouder said.
In Malta, the situation was “still much better than what I have mentioned”, where the family still remains “more or less strong”, Gouder said.
However, he warned that Malta “also has its own problems, and we are noticing that these problems are increasing”.
Gouder claimed that “various studies” showed that “the physical and mental health of family members was better, the family’s financial situation was better, they had more success in life and more satisfying sexual relationships that those who are not in marriage, like cohabitation”.
Likewise, he claimed that “studies” also showed that married couples were “happier, more emotionally and physically sound, live longer, suffer less long-term illnesses, and recover from certain diseases more quickly.”
Gouder also quoted from the NSO’s 2007 Lifestyle Survey which showed that almost 90 per cent of couples in a relationship were “happy or very happy about their relationships”.
However, the same survey also shows that 3.2 per cent of couples interviewed were “not happy or not happy at all in their relationship… Therefore we have to take care of them as well,” said Gouder.
Another study conducted by the University of Michigan, where 24,000 persons were studied over a period of 15 years’ time, gives a completely different perspective of marriage.
“It is not people getting married which give happiness; it is happy people getting married,” Gouder declared, citing the conclusions of this study.
However, according to him, this benefit is enjoyed “only by those who are married, but those who remain married with the same person, and who have in their minds a life-long commitment towards marriage”.
NSO Director-General Michael Pace-Ross explained that over the past few years, the average age for marriages rose to 32 for men and 29 for women.
In 2008, births outside marriage totalled 1,048, of which 352 had an unregistered father. In 2007, when there were 2,479 registered marriages, which rose slightly to 2,484 in 2008. In 2007, there were 637 registered separations and 35 divorces registered in Malta.
In 2008 there were 519 registered separations and 31 locally registered divorces. The number of annulments stood at 167 in 2007, and rose slightly to 188 in 2008.
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