Metsola’s abortion miracle

If you’ve been reading this column for a while, you will probably know that – unlike the 1970s disco-pop sensation Hot Chocolate (or the entire cast of The Full Monty, for that matter) – I don’t exactly ‘believe in miracles’, myself.

It might, I admit, be a somewhat boring way of looking the universe: but when people ‘miraculously’ recover from otherwise fatal diseases, I tend to ascribe it more to the efforts of all the medical professionals involved in their treatment (and yes; possibly, to other factors which we as yet know nothing about)… than to the intercession of various, long-dead ‘Saints and Martyrs’ (as a rule, ‘purchased’ through the currency of prayer…)

Likewise, when countries like Malta are spared the devastation of natural disasters, that wipe out great chunks of their neighbours’ populations – like the storm that caused over 4,000 deaths, and 50,000 displacements, in Libya last September – I’d say it has less to with ‘Divine Intervention’, than with what I call the simple ‘Luck of Geography’.

In this case, Prime Minister Robert Abela himself commented that the same storm ‘only missed us by a whisker’…. which also suggests that – had there been just the tiniest variation in wind-direction, that day – this rock we call ‘Malta’ might not even exist at all right now, for you to even read this article upon.

Conversely, it also suggests that we might not be quite so fortunate the next time round. Far better, then, to invest our energies in actually preparing ourselves for a possible future calamity… than in praying for a possible future ‘miracle’, that may-or-may-not actually materialise...

But hey, that’s just me! (And as I hinted earlier: I’m just a boring old fart, at the end of the day.) Besides: while I still maintain that there will always be a perfectly logical, rational explanation, for even the most bizarre, outlandish phenomena imaginable… I have to admit that there one or two things, in the known Universe today, that appear to have no scientific explanation whatsoever.

One of them concerns an Oasis song by the name of ‘Wonderwall’: which nearly everyone seems to consider ‘the greatest song of all time’ (when, if you ask me, it isn’t even remotely close to being the greatest song, in Oasis’ own back-catalogue….)

But I’ll save that mystery for another time. No, the one that has me more perplexed, right now, is… what the heck happened to Malta’s pro-life movement, over the past two years?

Reason I ask is that… well, there are quite a few, actually. Taking the most recent first: this morning, The Times carried an opinion piece by Kevin Dingli, under the headline ‘No fundamental right to abortion’.

Now: I don’t know much about Kevin Dingli himself (other than how he is described in the by-line: as ‘a lawyer’). But I do read his articles from time to time, so I am aware that he is very consistently, and adamantly, pro-life.

No surprises, then, to discover that his latest article would be highly (but HIGHLY) critical of President Emmanuel Macron’s recent decision, to enshrine abortion as a ‘human right’ in France’s Constitution. And I could say the same for Bishop Joseph Galea-Curmi: who likewise maintained the Catholic Church’s ultra-consistent, pro-life position, by “[decrying] France’s decision to make abortion a constitutional right, in a mass which marked the 60th anniversary of the founding of the National Council of Women.”

Such things are, after all, only to be expected … but, well, that’s the whole point right, there. Expectations.

OK, allow me to elaborate. Given that:

a)    the same President Macron has separately vowed to enshrine abortion as a human right, not just in his own country’s Constitution, but also the European Charter of Fundamental Human Rights; and

b)    Macron was also the guy who had convinced Roberta Metsola to sign a declaration – the ‘Simone Veil Pact’, which likewise defines abortion as a human right – back in 2020…

… I expected a far greater outcry, from Malta’s pro-life lobby, against what must surely appear (from their perspective) to be wholesale ‘backslide in the rights of the unborn’, right across the whole of Europe.

And yet, beyond that single article by a lawyer named Kevin Dingli (and Bishop Galea-Curmi’s sermon): so far, I have not seen even a fleeting reference to this issue, of any kind at all, anywhere in the local press.

Or even online, for that matter. OK: here I may be slightly disadvantaged, as I no longer have a Facebook account of my own, with which to spy on other people…

… but back when the US Supreme Court had reversed ‘Roe Vs Wade’ (the ruling through which abortion was first legalised in the States), the social networks had been briefly flooded, at the time, by comments both for and against.

Among the more public figures to welcome the US Supreme Court decision as ‘a step in the right direction’, were former PN leader Adrian Delia; PN MP Alex Borg; and any number of lower ranked officials – and even just plain old voters – from the same party.

Yet when a fellow EU member state takes a radical step in the clean opposite direction [Note: and by ‘radical’, I mean that not everyone in the pro-choice movement is comfortable with the idea of abortion qualifying as a ‘human right’. Some may even see it as a ‘step too far’]…

Nothing, as far as I can see. Unless, of course, I missed a few Facebook comments, here and there – oh, and with the notable exception of former PN stalwart Edwin Vassallo, who remains as consistent as ever – there has been no public reaction whatsoever, from the Nationalist Party, to the direction the entire EU seems to be taking, in the matter of abortion.

But wait, that’s just the start. A couple of weeks ago, Labour MEP Cyrus Engerer “billed himself the first Maltese in Brussels to have spoken in favour of women’s full bodily autonomy, in an impassioned intervention to a debate calling for abortion to become a fundamental right in the European Charter of fundamental rights.”

Now: not to rain on Cyrus Engerer’s parade, or anything, but… I have my doubts as to whether he really was the ‘first Maltese in Brussels’ to actually do that, you know. After all, Roberta Metsola had not only called for exactly the same thing, way back in January 2020 (just before becoming EP President, remember?)… but she even went one step further, and confirmed her newfound, pro-choice credentials IN WRITING, no less!

But let’s not split hairs, shall we? Regardless whether Cyrus Engerer made history with that ‘impassioned intervention’ of his… the fact remains that a Labour MEP (and something of a Nationalist bête-noir, too: seeing as how he had ‘jumped ship’, a few years earlier) had the temerity to ‘profanate’ the Holy Temple of the European Parliament, with such overtly ‘blasphemous’ pro-choice propaganda…

…and not so much as a squeak from anyone – not even a mouse! – across the length and breadth of a Christian Democrat-inspired party, that has always billed itself as an “Indefatigable Champion of the Rights of the Unborn” (not just in Malta; but in Europe, the World, and the rest of the known Universe, to boot…)

Weird, huh? And it only gets weirder, when you compare the PN’s silence today – only a couple of months away from the next EP election - with how the same party had always (but ALWAYS) capitalised on similar events, to besmirch their opponents with the dreaded ‘pro-abortion’ label.

One quick example out of many: when Arnold Cassola (then still with AD) was elected as secretary-General of the European Greens, the Nationalists had implied that – because the Greens are a ‘pro-choice’ party – Cassola must de facto be just as much of a ‘cold-blooded, child-murdering ABORTIONIST’ (hence, MURDERER), himself.

Oh, and let’s not forget that the same Nationalist Party had tried to achieve the clean opposite, of Macron’s ‘historical first’: they wanted to enshrine Malta’s total abortion ban into our Constitution… with the express aim of making it as difficult as possible, for future generations to in any way ‘introduce abortion to Malta’.

So for the same PN to suddenly not have anything at all to say on the subject, right now: a time when when Labour MEPs (and former MEPs: there’s Joseph Muscat too, remember?) are openly calling for abortion to be hailed as a ‘human right: in Malta, as it is in Brussels’…

.. well, there are only two explanations I can think of, really. And both of them are kind of, um, ‘hard to believe’.

Either something akin to a miracle REALLY occurred - possibly, along the lines of the Conversion of St Paul - whereby the erstwhile staunchly ‘pro-life’ Nationalist Party suddenly fell off its high-horse… and awoke two years later, to find itself morphed into an equally staunch ‘pro-choice’ party, instead;

Or else,  something equally miraculous must have happened, at the precise moment when the ink dried on Roberta Metsola’s signature of the Simone Veil Pact.

It turned into ‘the Blood of the Unborn Child’, I hear you ask? No! (Though I guess it might actually look that way, from the perspective of the many, truly committed ‘pro-life champions’ out there…]

But no: it was a different kind of ‘miracle’ that Roberta Metsola performed, by signing that pro-abortion declaration in January 2020.

Just like that, at the stroke of a pen, she made the Nationalist Pary’s entire, centennial abortion strategy simply ‘disappear’, in a puff of smoke…. almost as though it never even existed, at all.

And what else can I say? I might just start ‘believing in miracles’ a little bit more, from now on….