Are there alternatives to abortion in developing countries? How can the international community help mothers and their unborn children in these countries when problems like incest and rape arise so that mothers do not resort, or are led to resort, to abortion? Lately this happened in Darfur, in Sudan, where Amnesty International took the unexpected decision to support abortion in such cases.
The eight UN Millenium Development Goals (MDG) aim to improve the plight of unborn children. I had argued in this newspaper (29 August) that a workable alternative to abortion in these cases is massive investment by the international community in human, material and financial resources – in education, medical and health care, sanitary services, adoption, fostering and other social work approaches, amongst others.
I reckoned that funds for these services can come from even small contributions 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, despair and, again, death. When North Korea announced, lately, that it was abandoning its programme for the production of these weapons, after huge international pressure, it was thought that this fitted nicely into the proposed formula.
Now it appears that things are moving in the proposed direction. Lately German Chancellor Angela Merkel while in Kyoto said she wanted to offer developing countries a compromise climate change pact based on population size. At the same time she poised the very important question: “What kind of measure do we use to create a just world?” Applied to cases of abortion in developing countries this means a “just” approach to the plight of the mother and the child in her womb, and alternatives to abortion.
The answer to Merkel’s question, as reported recently in the international press, was given by Merkel herself and British new Prime Minister Gordon Brown when they announced the creation of a new global health scheme – the International Health Partnership – to help the world’s poor.
Norway, France, Italy, the Netherlands and international organisations including the World Bank, the World Health Organisation, the European Commission and the African Development Bank have also thrown their support behind this programme. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Microsoft chairman’s charity, is also involved.
In fact seven developing countries in Africa and Asia will be the first to take part in a new global health campaign aimed at directing aid more effectively at the basic needs of poor countries. In fact health ministers from Burundi, Ethiopia, Kenya, Mozambique, Zambia, Cambodia and Nepal took part in the launch of the initiative at Gordon Brown’s office in London on 5 September.
The new partnership aims to reduce child and maternal mortality and tackle diseases such as HIV/AIDS by building long-term health infrastructure in developing countries and by improving coordination among donors. Donors will work towards providing longer term and more predictable funding to poor countries to support their health plans.
Half a million women die each year in childbirth, while 10 million children do not reach their fifth birthday and only one in four of those in need of AIDS treatment in Africa receives it. Mr Brown is promoting the new initiative as part of his efforts to kick-start the UN’s Millennium Development Goals aimed at slashing extreme poverty by 2015. At a June summit in Germany this year world powers also pledged to provide the finance needed to meet health care commitments made as part of the development goals.
Target 4 of the UN 8 Millenium Development Goals (MDG) which were discussed at our Mediterranean Conference Centre and the Maltese Parliament on 17 and 19 October respectively is “the reduction by two thirds the mortality rate among children under five.”
Some of the world’s most prominent scientists and physicians testified to a US Senate committee that human life begins at conception. In the meantime millions of unborn children are dying also through procured abortions not only in the developing countries but mostly in developed countries, especially in the USA and the western world. The UN MDG is aiming to reduce child mortality only among born children in the developing countries, especially in Africa. So far It has not aimed to reduce child mortality among all children, “before and after birth”, as declared in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. It should.
Besides, the mother’s womb should be considered everywhere the first environment, the first world for the unborn child. Medical pratictioners, researchers and scientists have been shouting loudly to make law and policy makers more aware that sustainable development, free from pollution of any kind, should be a strategic objective also for the general well-being of all children “before and after birth”.
Target 7 of the MDG, after all, aims “to integrate the principles of sustainable development into country policies and programmes.” So far neo-colonialism, economic interests, expediency and inertia may have stalled the realisation of the MDG. Things, now, seem to be moving in the right direction.
For a long time Maltese lay and religious NGOs have been making substantial financial and material contributions, and offering their personal professional services for sustainable development in the developing countries. It is hoped the Malta government overseas development policy, when published, hopefully soon, as declared in the recent debate in the Maltese Parliament, will shed clear light on this subject also from a Maltese perspective.

Tony Mifsud,
Coordinator of the Malta Movement for the Rights, Protection and Development
of the Unborn Child

Michael Mifsud had just landed at Malta International Airport and was being greeted by well-wishers when a PN or government official whisked him away for what Mifsud had been to understand, a meeting with premier Lawrence Gonzi since the prime minister wished to congratulate him for his recent feats for Malta, and his English club, particularly his demolition of Manchester United in the Carling Cup.
It is only natural that when told that one would be meeting the prime minister, one would believe that such a meeting is going to be held at the prime minister’s office in Castille. Instead, Michael was taken to the Eden Ice Arena where the PN’s General Council was being held.
One could easily notice bewilderment on Michael Mifsud’s face on entering the arena. As has also been reported, he looked “uncomfortable” since, as Michael Mifsud himself admitted. “I never had even an inking that I would be attending a political activity”. When interviewed by another section of the press, Michael Mifsud was quoted as saying: “I insist that I am a sportsman and believe that sport should never be mixed with politics.”
Shame on Dr Gonzi for allowing his party’s propaganda machine to con Michael Mifsud in this disgraceful way, hoping to thus score a political goal using the idol of Malta’s sporting public in the process!
There is a lesson to be learned. If the PN has no qualms of conscience in tricking Michael for their own political ends, how much less will their conscience trouble them when conning common people in their desperate bid to hold power at all costs?

Eddy Privitera
San Gwann

Kindly allow me to reply to the letter entitled ‘Stop the politics of demonisation’ by Edward Fenech, Alternattiva Demokratika spokesman (MaltaToday, 14 October 2007) by pointing out that when, during the parliamentary sitting held on 13 May 2001, Evarist Bartolo MP repeatedly stated that all Nationalists were “rubbish”, neither AD nor the Malta Labour Party ever protested against this. Is this not a case of two weights and two measures?

Edward Torpiano,
Floriana