Writing in the MaltaToday (22 August) James Debono reported Amnesty International’s decision, in summer 2007, to back access to abortion in cases of rape and incest, which brought condemnation on AI from the Vatican.
In the same article Debono quotes Jean Pierre Gauci of AI Malta as saying that “the decision by AI was motivated by the situation in Sudan, where women are systematically raped by militias and face death by stoning if they commit adultery”.
Gauci added that AI has not taken a stand on whether abortion is ethically right or wrong. It should, once it declares itself as a human rights movement. He said AI’s position is not for abortion as a right but for women’s rights to be free of fear, threat and coercion as they manage all consequences of rape and other grave human rights violations. Yes, but not at the expense of the unborn child, another human being like the mother. Yes, the mother has a right to be helped, also by the State, to find other solutions besides abortion.
The Domestic Violence Law of Malta, Act XX of 2005, describes both the mother and her unborn child, as “members of the household”, and as such both should be protected from “any” type of domestic violence by any member of the household.
While stressing that AI does not take a stand on whether abortion is ethically right or wrong, Gauci in Malta, and AI on the international stage, seem to be conveniently forgetting, or deliberately ignoring, the fact that unavoidably, AI cannot but be making an ethical choice when, by default, AI does not say also that its position is for the rights of unborn children to be free from fear and threats as they manage, in their defenceless and voiceless states in the womb, the consequences of torture as very small human beings, which eventually leads also to their death. The adulterous woman in Sudan faces torture and death by stoning. The unborn child in all parts of the world faces torture and death by the abortionist’s medical or other lethal instruments. Their remains are also, unashamedly, used for cosmetic purposes, probably mostly by women.
Apparently in a determined effort to help raped women in their plight by abortion, AI is conveniently forgetting that abortion is the slavery and torture of modern times, sanctioned, for good measure in so many parts of the world, by democratic means. Ironically, AI is putting itself on the side of slavery.
Militias, when raping women, do not use any democratic means. They just act brutally. Abortionists in so many democracies similarly act in a very brutal manner and, to boot, seek and obtain, so cynically, the protection of the democratic state.
The Vatican, while disagreeing with AI and at the same time accusing it of betraying its mission, said why it disagreed. Cardinal Renato Martino, Head of the Vatican’s Justice and Peace Commission said: “to selectively justify abortion, even in cases of rape, is to define the innocent child within the womb as an enemy, a ‘thing’ that must be destroyed.”
To me as a social worker and former director of the department of family welfare, Cardinal Martino said it all, irrespective of the fact that he happens to be a Catholic priest and a high dignitary of the Catholic Church. This could have been said, with equal passion, by any agnostic. Indeed it should be said by any human rights activist.
Kate Gilmore, executive deputy secretary general of AI is reported answering that if the cardinal had been in Darfur and stood between rape victims and the stones being thrown at them perhaps he could talk again about whether or not AI had the integrity to stand firm for human rights.
If Gilmore, in 2006, were listening to Dr Tony Levatino – an American gynaecologist and ex-abortionist – in Malta declaring on state television “I performed thousands of abortions”... “It really hits you that this is a real person you are killing” – see Malta Pink Magazine, December, 2006 – probably she would have decided to recommend to AI to have the integrity to stand also for the human rights of unborn children anywhere in the world and not say that AI has not taken a stand on whether abortion is ethically right or wrong.
Gilmore should also ponder deeply on what Dr Thomas Verny, psychiatrist, family therapist and father, wrote in his book, first published in 1981, and again in 2006, The Secret Life of the Unborn Child: “The evidence of intelligent life in the womb is overwhelming. Parents can contribute actively, before and during birth, to giving their child happiness and security for the rest of his or her life.
Why is Amnesty International displaying such flagrant discrimination in favour of women in distress... against unborn children in distress? Has the woman’s world travelled so fast, in a matter of a few decades, from the victimized half of the world to the oppressive half ? Has it turned its privileged and honourable status of motherhood into that of murderer of its children in the womb?
Gilmore should know that the case for alternatives to abortion rests on medical evidence, on medical facts, not fantasies, as shown above, and not on belief. To assert otherwise is sheer bigotry.
At this stage the question poses itself. How can the international community try to solve this problem by being just and helpful to both the mother and the baby in her womb and when problems arise does not go for the most convenient and easy ways out, but search and find alternatives to abortions?
Preferably these should not be sought in further legislation but in massive investment – by the United Nations, the European Union, and organisations like Amnesty International – in human, material and financial resources in education, medical care, sanitary services, adoption, fostering and other social work approaches, amongst others.
The funds for these services can surely be collected, even through a very minimal contribution, from the outlays on the production, and purchases, of weapons of mass destruction which not only do not eradicate poverty and disease, but foster misery and, again, death.
The time to stop the carnage of slaughtering unborn children through abortion, like rabbits in a “fenkata”, seems to have arrived in places like the USA. The President of the USA, no cardinal of the Catholic Church, seems to be unequivocally pro-life and against abortion and is acting accordingly.
The massive killing of unborn children has to stop somewhere at some time or another, if the civilised world expects to continue to be considered civilized.

Tony Mifsud is the coordinator for the Movement for the Rights, Protection and Development of the Unborn Child