“Dude, he said ‘abortion’. Har-har, heh-heh, hur-hur…”

Ever get the feeling that you’re stuck in a never-ending episode of ‘Beavis and Butthead’ (only, alas, without the epic heavy metal soundtrack, that made those cartoons so enjoyable in the first place)?

No? Ah well. Happens to me all the time. But that’s probably because (whether I like to be reminded about it, or not) I very much belong to that 1980s ‘MTV generation’, myself. So not only do I remember, with perfect clarity, the original launch of MTV in 1981: but I even recall a distant age, when a station calling itself ‘Music Television’ actually DID, from time to time, feature this obscure, long-forgotten phenomenon called, um, ‘music’…

But back to ‘Beavis and Butthead’. For the benefit of those (rather lucky, with hindsight) individuals who may have missed out on that particular animated series from the 1990s: let’s just say that the names refer to two American teenage delinquents, who were renowned the world over for… well, quite a few things, actually:

their unique brand of schoolboy ‘toilet humour’;

their insanely-contagious trademark ‘chuckle’ (which is impossible to actually transliterate, by the way: so, for the purposes of this article, I’m going with ‘Har-har, heh-heh, hur-hur!’);

their tendency to reduce everything to a basic, binary ‘good versus bad’ dialectic: whereby everything was either ‘cool’… or ‘sucked’… with absolutely no grey areas, in between;

And lastly, the conspicuous absence of anything at all, between their own ears, that could ever realistically be described as an ‘IQ’.

There, that should be enough to go on for now. (And it should also be enough to explain why I constantly feel like I’m trapped inside one of their episodes, too: but one step at a time.)

Now: just to give a rough idea of what that ‘schoolboy toilet humour’ sounded like… consider the following scene (which I freely admit I am recreating from memory, well over 20 years later):

TEACHER: OK, class: for this assignment you’re going to need a dictionary…

BUTTHEAD: Dude… he said ‘dick’! Har-har, heh-heh, hur-hur!

BEAVIS: Har-har, heh-heh, hur-hur! Har-har, heh-heh, hur-hur! Har-har, heh-heh, hur… AAARGH! I AM THE GREAT CORNHOLIO! I NEED TP FOR MY BUNGHOLE….!"

Oops! Sorry, forgot to mention one other thing this cartoon was universally associated with, back in its day. It was decidedly, and very unapologetically… SURREAL (almost right up there with that other classic of 1990s cartoon surrealism: ‘Ren & Stimpy’…)

In any case: I imagine you can already see why that scene reminds me so distinctly of the supposed ‘abortion debate’ we’re supposed to be having, right now.

For let’s face it, folks: replace the word ‘dick!’ – or any other obscenity that Beavis and Butthead always find so amusing – with the word ‘abortion’… and replace all the ‘Har-har, heh-heh, hur-hurs!’ with hysterical screams of ‘Witch! Murderer! Baby Killer!’, etc… [Note: ‘I AM THE GREAT CORNHOLIO!’, on the other hand, can stay right where it is. It fits in perfectly with the surrealism of the context…]

… and, well, it becomes an instant, exact replica of the entire ‘ abortiondebate’ we’ve had (or tried to have) so far.

Consider, for instance, how NET TV reported the first day of the Parliamentary debate, over a proposed amendment that will (whatever Chris Fearne may say to the contrary, in our interview today) ‘decriminalise’ at least one aspect of Malta’s total abortion ban:  by including a (very necessary) exception for cases where the mother’s life/health is in danger.

One by one, as they passed through the House of Parliament’s revolving doors, each and every government MP was accosted by the same question, from the same NET TV journalist:

“Is this a bill about abortion?”

And one by one, they all responded in one of two ways. They either instantly dived for cover, for all the world as though ‘scared shitless of the question’…

Or else, they gave variations of (roughly) the same answer: “No, because… take your pick: a) it’s a ‘pro-life’ amendment; b) it will ‘save mother’s lives’; c) ‘abortion will remain illegal anyway’; d) ‘something completely and utterly unintelligible’; e) any or all of the above.”

In the first case, the journalist would simply shout the question again (as they retreated at maximum escape-velocity); in the second, she would invariably retort with the same, rapid-fire follow-up:

‘Do you know that, with your answer, you have just called the President Emeritus a liar?’

Erm… see what I mean? Sorry, but… that makes even Beavis and Butthead sound like ‘paragons of logic and rationality’, you know.

Leaving aside that the journalist never actually specified which ‘President Emeritus’ she was actually referring to (and for all I myself know about Maltese Presidential history: it could just as easily have been ‘the ghost of Sir Anthony Mamo’, as ‘Marie-Louise Colerio Preca’…)

But I’ll admit that was just an aside. No, the real problem is… what was that line of questioning even trying to achieve, in the first place? Because as far as I can see: its only possible purpose, was to somehow force those government MPs to utter the dreaded ‘A-word’… just to be able to crucify them afterwards, for doing so. (In other words, exactly as Beavis and Butthead used to do to their long-suffering teacher: trick him into unwittingly uttering something that ‘sounds like an obscenity’, so they can… ‘chuckle’.)

Which of course, brings us to what the follow-up question would no doubt have been: had any of those government MPs (even a single one) had the guts to come back with a direct, honest answer:

‘Yes, actually. This bill is ‘about abortion’. And it HAS to be ‘about abortion’, too… because its entire purpose is to amend Article 243 of Chapter 9 of the Criminal Code (you know: the one which regulates, erm, ‘abortion’) so that doctors who perform emergency, life-saving pregnancy-terminations, are no longer threatened with an (entirely inhumane) prison sentence of up to four years. And the same goes for women caught up in those unfortunate situations, too…’ (Honestly, though: how much more ‘about abortion’ can this amendment possibly be?)

But, well… you can just imagine the reaction, had any Maltese politician (of any party) ever said something as fundamentally self-evident, as that. ‘So, you admit that you’re in favour of abortion! That you’re a murderer! A baby-killer! The reincarnation of Hannibal Lecter!  Etc., etc.’

By the same token, you can also easily understand exactly WHY no Maltese politician (with one or two exceptions recently: all, I need hardly add, female) has ever plucked up the courage to openly ‘discuss the issue of abortion’, in this country: no, not even when they themselves are pushing legal amendments, to the country’s only abortion law.

Because this ‘Beavis and Butthead’ effect… this automatic, knee-jerk reaction, that instantly classifies ALL opinions on the subject into either ‘pro-life’ (i.e., ‘cool!’), or ‘pro-abortion’ (i.e, ‘sucks!’)… it’s not limited only to random questions at press-conferences, here and there. It’s also implicit in anything every ‘President Emeritus’ we’ve ever had – and I could extent that to every Prime Minister; every opposition leader …. heck, pretty much ‘everybody, FULL-STOP!’ - has ever said, in every ‘abortion discussion’ we’ve ever had.

That is to say: nothing at all, that has any relevance whatsoever to the actual medical issue at hand; and everything under the sun, about the word ‘abortion’ itself… and how very ‘scary’ it is.

It has, in a nutshell, become utterly impossible to have any form of rational discussion on this topic, at all. And to be brutally honest: it wouldn’t even bother me, so much… if it wasn’t also beginning to impact my own work.

Right: I’ve left myself with too little space, to do what I usually make a point of ‘never actually doing’… that is: ‘dissecting one of my own interviews, on the same day that it appeared in print’. So I’ll leave you read my interview with Chris Fearne, in today’s issue, for yourselves.

All I’ll say, for now, is that…. at one point, I confronted the Health Minister with the fact (in different words, naturally) that he was only ever interested in addressing the ‘Beavises and Buttheads’ of this debate; and that all his answers, to all my questions, were invariably geared towards what he himself described as ‘the people out there’.

But never, not once (or at least, not explicitly) did the Health Minister actually pause to address anyone, in the entire country, who might actually have a basic understanding of the fundamental health issue that is at stake, in this particular debate.

Now: as with all those other government MPs… it is not exactly very hard to understand WHY Chris Fearne responded to my questions, the way he did (and also why, for that matter, I didn’t press him as hard as I probably should have: given that he was literally contradicting himself, with almost every sentence).

It was abundantly clear, right from the first question, that even the Health Minister (no less) has become so conditioned by the ‘Beavis and Butthead’ effect… that he, too, is incapable of seriously discussing a medical procedure that is considered – by all international health authorities and institutes, worldwide – to be a fundamental component of contemporary healthcare.

And if not even the Health Minister can bring himself to use the dreaded A-word… when he himself insists, in the same interview, that his own amendment actually represents the ‘right thing to do’…

I mean: what hope could there possibly even be, of ever having a ‘debate about abortion’, that doesn’t sound exactly like:

“Dude, he said the A-word! Har, Har, heh, heh, hur, hur…”?