Oh look: another bullshit abortion argument...

Next on the list was divorce... an argument that actually began around the 1950s, only to culminate in an altogether unnecessarily tense and unpleasant referendum last year.

And now? It's IVF, of course. What else?

What all these things have in common is that they were all supposed to 'pave the way to abortion' in one way or another... and once abortion got a foot in the door, everything else was supposed to follow. Stem cell research, euthanasia, eugenics, ethnic cleansing, World War Three... you name the nightmare scenario, and sure enough it was meant to come about as a direct logical consequence of any of the above issues.

By my count, this means that abortion should have actually been legalised in Malta before I was even born (oops! Sorry, I meant 'conceived'); and right now we should be discussing the legalisation of human cloning for cannibalism purposes.

But something must have gone slightly wrong somewhere. Take a look around you, and tell me: how many abortion clinics do you see? No, no, don't be shy... shout it right out if you think you know the answer. How many are there? A hundred? Fifty? Twenty? Ten? What, not even one?

Yes, indeed. After half a century's worth of endless predictions about how 'inevitable' the introduction of abortion would be as a result of this, that and the other... there is not a single solitary abortion clinic (well, not a legal one at any rate) anywhere to be found in the entire, frigging country.

What happened, I wonder? How could so many predictions go so hopelessly, hopelessly awry... and yet carry on getting themselves trotted out, inexorably, each time the country discusses anything vaguely objectionable to the Catholic Church? And while I'm bothering to even ask... why is it that generations of parents continue to fill their little children's impressionable minds with idiotic stories of the 'Babaw' (or 'Boogie-man', if you prefer the more musically-inclined English version'...) stories which the same children invariably believe for a while, before coming round to eventually realising that 'Babaw' is simply just another word for 'Bullshit'?

Needless to add the answer to both questions is identical, but I would still like an official explanation from the people making the official predictions. And oh look: right on cue, along comes the Cana Movement, sombrely warning us all that "wherever IVF was introduced, this led to many abuses and opened the way for abortion".

Of course, the Cana Movement stopped short of explaining exactly how IVF should be expected to succeed where civil marriage, artificial contraception and divorce have all manifestly failed. And this prompted Rev. Rene Camilleri - professor of Theology at the University of Malta - to ask the same movement for a detailed explanation.

"The Cana Movement owes it to the country and to the Church to demonstrate how and why IVF opens the way to abortion", he wrote in Friday's Times. He is not the only one to expect an answer.

Look again at the above quote from the Cana Movement's press statement. It asserts, with astonishing conviction, that everywhere that IVF was introduced went on to also introduce abortion. To be perfectly frank, I don't think I have ever read such an outrageously flawed statement anywhere in my entire life.

Do I even need to spell out what's wrong with that assertion? OK, here goes. There are only a handful of countries around the world where abortion was introduced after IVF. Mexico is one example. Portugal, which legalised abortion only last year, is another.

In both cases, abortion came over 25 years later. And this raises another question of its own: if IVF is supposed to 'pave the way' to abortion ... how do you account for such an extraordinary delay between the 'cause' and its 'effect'?

And that's just in the countries where abortion did indeed come after IVF: i.e., a tiny minority within a much larger group of countries where the sequence was actually in reverse. That's right: had the Cana Movement actually bothered researching the subject, they would have discovered that everywhere else in the world, abortion was legalised before IVF was pioneered in the mid-1980s.

In the USA it was with a Supreme Court ruling (Roe versus Wade) in 1973 - a good 10 years before the birth of the first test-tube baby. Italy likewise legalised abortion in the 1970s, and in the UK it was introduced even earlier.

Now, can anyone out there can kindly explain to me how there could possibly be anything resembling a causal link between two things, when the 'effect' actually PRECEDES the 'cause'? Please note that is not a rhetorical question. I would like an answer, please... and like Fr Rene Camilleri I would like it to  come specifically from the Cana Movement... seeing as it was the Cana Movement which came out with this absurd argument in the first place.

While I'm on the subject, it is pertinent to note that the Cana Movement is not just any old movement of Catholic extremists whose psychotic ramblings can conveniently be ignored. No indeed: the Cana Movement is supposed to be a specialist organisation, run by experts in family matters. Otherwise, how on earth can it justify its national status as a marriage counselling agency which runs compulsory courses for couples who wish to marry in Church?

Personally, I fail to see how someone responsible for such a bizarre chronological absurdity - the equivalent of arguing that babies are actually born before sexual intercourse takes place, and not afterwards - should be entrusted to lecture others on how to tie a shoelace... let alone on issues as vitally important as family planning, raising children, and so on.

Yet this is the actual state of affairs in 21st century Malta: the ones who know least are entrusted with the responsibility to infuse subsequent generations with their own ignorance. Can anyone be surprised, then, that the state of the Maltese family is what it is today? I.e., with a separation/divorce rate rivalling that of the United States?

In any case: I will leave the self-styled experts in family affairs to come up with an explanation for their theory of how IVF can lead to abortion, when abortion actually came before IVF (and for fairly obvious reasons, too).

Meanwhile, here is why I personally think there is no such correlation whatsoever: not only is there obviously no causal link between IVF and abortion... but the very notion that abortion may one day be introduced to Malta is so utterly remote and unlikely, that to be perfectly frank we probably stand a better chance of one day evolving into a superpower to rival China. (Oh and by the way I am obviously talking about legal abortion here - not backstreet abortion, which has been available in this country forever.)

And guess what? The reason for this improbability has absolutely nothing to do with religion or even morality. It has to do with demographics, and the basic law of supply and demand. And the economics of abortion in a Maltese context are not very encouraging at all. First of all, abortion clinics cost money to open and to operate. And (to use the hackneyed meme from the Council of Elrond) one does not simply invest money into any venture without any prospect of a return.

Bearing in mind that the only clients who might avail of local abortion services to begin with are limited to impoverished women who can't afford a ferry-ride to Sicily, coupled with an operation which will cost little more than 200 euros or thereabouts... well, I can't imagine that businessmen will be falling over themselves in the mad scramble to fill every corner of this island with abortions clinics... like they have already done with gentlemen's clubs and betting shops.

As I find it unlikely in the extreme that this sort of service will be available on the NHS, this means that the great big 'Babaw' everyone is so utterly afraid of turns out on closer scrutiny to be nothing more than a business venture destined to go BANKRUPT.

So even if a doctor, businessmen, or (more likely) a combination of the two were insane enough to throw away tens, possibly hundreds of thousands of euros to set up such a facility... it wouldn't last more than a month anyway.

To add to the constraints of simple economies of scale, there is also a psychological issue that must always be borne in mind when dealing with this dangerous topic. While 50 years of 'Babaw'-style scaremongering have resulted only in a litany of unfulfilled prophecies, it has nonetheless been successful in creating a nationwide atmosphere of fear and visceral, undisguised hatred directed at pro-choice people in general... women in particular. This is presumably why there is no serious objection to the disgusting proviso in our code of laws that threatens such women with prison sentences on a daily basis - a threat which has never actually been carried out.

Considering that there are people out there would willingly imprison even women who procure abortions legally in other countries - some have even suggested mandatory pregnancy testing for all women the local airport - it is clear that we are dealing with a level of fundamentalism comparable to the excesses commonly associated with extreme Islamist movements.

The upshot, of course, is that you would have to be little short of suicidal to even think of aborting at a licensed clinic in Malta. I mean honestly: can you even imagine what the scene outside this country's first abortion clinic would be like? I happened to be present when a single pro-choice activist (Rebecca Gomperts, from the Dutch organisation 'Women on Waves') came to Malta just to give a public lecture. I saw (and heard) the mass hysteria outside the Castille Hotel. There was a candle-vigil, and anyone who tried attending the event was aggressively taunted on their way in. At one point Paul Vincenti (of the Gift of Life movement) argued with the concierge, claiming that she should be kicked out of the hotel for her pro-abortion views.

There was even an attempt to have her arrested, for crying out loud... spearheaded, if you please, by Dr Michael Asciak: who was once chairman of parliament's bio-ethics committee.

All this commotion just to try and stop a lecturer from delivering a lecture... so what on earth are we to expect from the same people, when their mission suddenly becomes to stop a doctor from performing an abortion?

Make no mistake: it will almost certainly end in violence. Even without the aforementioned existing financial obstacles, any doctor who tried opening an abortion clinic here would have to hire personal security for himself and his family. As for any women insane enough to try to avail of the service locally... well, they would have to fight their way through a lynch-mob of Rosary-wielding religious maniacs; and if they got through without being hurt or maimed, they will of course by then have been duly identified, and will henceforth be forever labelled 'child murderers', 'monsters', and so forth.

Under such circumstances... what woman in her right mind would choose to abort in Malta; when she can simply hop on to a low-cost flight to a safe and discreet location anywhere in Europe, and do the same thing without any of the above hassle?

Think of all this, next time someone tries making you swallow that ridiculous lie that IVF will 'pave the way' for abortion. Which reminds me: The Cana Movement. I'm still waiting for that explanation, you know...