It seems certain promoters of the so-called “pro-life” Constitutional amendment have hit upon an ingenious new strategy in their ongoing campaign: inventing fictitious supporters for the cause.
How does it work? Like this: you first invent a pseudonym – ideally, something suitably generic and yet idiosyncratic enough to be believed... oh, and quite obviously female, because it is widely known that this particular campaign is more popular among men. Something like… “Alexia Manduca”? Yes, that’ll do. And then, just attach the name to the same letter you were going to write anyway, and send it off to the Sunday Times. What could be simpler?
And apart from giving the impression that your cause is more popular than it really is, this strategy has other, more sinister advantages. For instance, you can hide behind a fictitious name to simply lie about people… as the inventors of Alexia Manduca did last Sunday, when they repeated, yet again, the same old tired lie that anyone who reasons against their precious Constitutional amendment is by definition also pro-choice.
Naturally, in keeping with a solemn oath to pursue all such instances of dishonesty to the ends of the earth, the chairman of AD – the Green Party wrote in to dispel the prevarication like a fifth horseman of the Apocalypse. And in true Vassallo fashion (if I say so myself) his reply was cogent, well-written, lucid and extremely to the point. But – much as I hate to fish out the rather glaring fly in the ointment – Dr Vassallo also made two very basic mistakes.
The first is that, contrary to popular belief, there is actually no such thing as a “pro-life campaign” in Malta.
“Pro-life campaigns” are campaigns which seek to change laws in order to ban abortion in those countries where abortion is already legal. For instance, there is a very active “pro-life” campaign in the United States: it aims to overturn the Roe vs Wade Supreme Court ruling, which in 1973 controversially granted women a Constitutional right to terminate pregnancy.
American pro-lifers have campaigned tirelessly to roll back this development: one recent strategy was the intense lobbying for a pro-choice replacement when Judge Sandra Day O’Connor retired from the Supreme Court in 2005 (and the equally intense fury when President Bush appointed his own attorney, Harriet Myers, instead).
Admittedly, such movements also exist in countries where abortion is already illegal, such as Ireland and Poland… but that is only because, unlike Malta, both Ireland and Poland also have active pro-choice movements, lobbying for the introduction of abortion with as much passion and determination as their pro-life counterparts.
By way of contrast, any notion of a “pro-life” campaign in Malta is utterly absurd. In case nobody’s noticed, abortion is already illegal here. In fact, our laws are almost unbelievably draconian, threatening women with prison, and not making any allowances in any cases at all: not rape, not incest, not even when the mother’s life may be in jeopardy.
Occasionally, our somewhat primitive abortion laws also result in rather anomalous court rulings. One recent example involved a judgment preventing a (foreign) woman from leaving the country on the mere suspicion that she intended to terminate a pregnancy abroad. On that occasion, a man filed for a warrant of injunction against the woman in question, arguing that she was carrying “his” baby (please note: “his”, not “their”); and that she intended to abort it in a clinic overseas. Incredibly, the (male) judge consented… without even checking to verify whether the woman concerned was even pregnant!
In so doing, a very dangerous precedent was born… sorry, conceived… whereby any man can stop any woman from leaving the country, simply by claiming that she might be planning to abort. Incidentally, the ruling in question did not take into account the possibility – nay, overwhelming likelihood – that abortion may have been perfectly legal in the woman’s country of destination. So in this instant we cannot even argue that the ruling was aimed at preventing a crime from being committed elsewhere.
In the end, however, this matters little. For it transpired that the woman in question was NOT pregnant, and that the entire affair was a ruse to prevent her from being forcibly deported for outstaying her visa’s expiry date. Ho, ha, hum.
(Needless to add, none of this would even be possible in a country which actually respected women as human beings, and where there is a deep-seated understanding of the concept of human rights. But this is Malta, so there you have it.)
The second aspect Harry Vassallo got wrong is the extent of popular support for the proposal. For some strange reason he talks of a “vast majority” which has embraced the Constitutional amendment proposal… but so far, all the evidence appears to suggest the contrary.
For instance: isn’t it strange that no recent statistics are ever forthcoming in support of this claim? The only surveys to be bandied about, over and over again, are more than two years old: namely, a Sunday Times survey suggesting that 94 per cent believe that “life begins at conception” (please note: that “life begins at conception”, not that this belief should be reflected in the Constitution); and a “scientific survey”, indicating support levels of 85 per cent, conducted by the television programme Xarabank in June 2005… a time when hardly any of the arguments against the proposal had actually surfaced.
Besides, even if true – and I strongly suspect it is deeply flawed – this latter survey conversely reveals a minority of 15 per cent against the proposal. That makes around 60,000 people. What about them? Don’t their views count?
In any case: Alexia Manduca’s letter was itself an indication that popular support for the proposal is actually a good deal lower than most seem to think. For if such an overwhelming majority actually existed, why would anyone feel the need to invoke fictitious supporters to aid the cause?
Other than those two mistakes, Dr Vassallo’s letter was a sterling exposé of the true intentions behind this grotesquely dishonest campaign. Part of it deserves to be quoted in full: “Extremist right-wing groups have adopted these tactics in a campaign across the EU, exploiting real political issues such as immigration, as well as political fantasies such as the altogether absurd fear of the introduction of abortion in Malta, where all serious political parties are pro-life. Their desire is to provoke an opposition in order to demonise it, thus fuelling further panic in order to roll back the freedoms gained by ordinary citizens in the last 50 years and which allow them to achieve peaceful co-existence through mutual tolerance.”
Honestly: John Stuart Mill himself couldn’t have worded it better. And I must say, it is so nice to see the Green party leader back where he belongs. This is why I was surprised – nay, dumbfounded… nay, utterly astounded, gobsmacked, thunderstruck, bowled over sideways and (to transliterate that priceless Maltese expression) left “with my eyes behind my ears”… by what I read next.
Having emphatically exploded the entire campaign, Harry Vassallo went on to announce that his party will now be actively engaged in a fund-raising campaign – for the benefit of the pro-life movement itself.
No, I’m serious. This is what he said: “Rather than suing for libel, we invite readers of The Sunday Times to make out a cheque payable to the Movement for the Protection of the Unborn Child…”
Huh? What? Come again? OK, let me see if I got this right: A newspaper (The Sunday Times) prints a defamatory fictitious letter (signed Alexia Manduca), which claims that the Green Party (starring Harry Vassallo) is pro-choice, when the same party has already made a public commitment to sue anyone who dares claim that it is anything other than pro-life.
Incidentally, this is not the first time the same newspaper has done this: on other occasions, the editor has had to publish apologies over similar insinuations made in similar letters, albeit written by people who actually exist. So while the editor may not have known the letter’s author was fictitious, he was perfectly aware that its contents were libellous. And he published it anyway.
But no matter: Harry Vassallo very generously opts not to sue the newspaper – and rightly so, for suing newspapers is always a cheap, facile and nasty thing to do – but what does he do instead? He asks its readers (its readers, for heaven’s sake – people who are entirely blameless in the whole affair) to part with their hard-earned cash… and give it to an organisation called “The Movement for the Protection and Development of the Unborn Child”: a key player in the same campaign Dr Vassallo so rightly describes as “political fantasy” aimed at “rolling back the freedoms gained by ordinary citizens in the last 50 years”.
Matters became stranger still when I tried making contact with this mysterious organisation, in order to ask what I consider to be the most cogent question given the circumstances.
What does it actually intend to do with all this money, kindly collected for its benefit by Alternattiva Demokratika – the Green Party?
Well, I didn’t get very far, for the simple reason that: a) the Movement for the Protection of the Unborn Child does not seem to have any website; b) it is not listed in the telephone directory; c) an Internet search reveals only references made by other sources, invariably without any contact details, and; d) when I did finally get hold of an email address for its founder, Mr Tony Mifsud, I never received any reply.
Which I suppose should come as no surprise. After all, seeing as the movement feels no obligation whatsoever to make itself in any way accessible to the general public, why the hell should its founder answer any questions regarding his use of public donations?
Why, indeed.
