Another referendum? Bring it on…

I don’t know where the saying came from, but it seems to be getting more and more relevant with each passing year. 

Be careful what you wish for. You never know, you might actually get it in the end…

And that is very much what I found myself thinking, as I read about how Malta’s pro-life organisations are now floating the idea of a ‘referendum’ on embryo freezing. 

I fully understand their concerns, of course. We just don’t get to vote often enough in this country, do we? Never mind that we have general elections every five years, MEP elections just as often, and local council elections in one-third of the country every single year… oh, not to mention three referendums since 2003 (two of them in the past five years alone). 

Clearly, the prospect of casting one’s vote every five minutes or so – and on pretty much every issue under the sun, too – is just not enough to sate our boundless national appetite for direct democracy.

Like Oliver Twist, we always want MORE.

And it seems we want more opportunities to vote, even when recent electoral history strongly suggests that the ones who call for a referendum are actually the likeliest to lose it. The past two examples illustrated this danger with almost prophetic precision: in 2011, Malta voted in favour of divorce, in a referendum called by a Prime Minister – and supported by a conservative establishment– who was clearly convinced he enjoyed the backing of an overwhelming national majority at the time.

So entrenched was this delusion that the Archbishop’s Curia even issued a press release – embargoed until the result was public – practically apologising for the it acted throughout the referendum as it foresaw the victory of the divorce movement.

What happened next? Well, let’s just say it reminded me a little of Hiroshima and Nagasaki… only without the radiation sickness. 

Then there was last year’s referendum, in which Malta upheld the practice of hunting in spring… despite long-standing polls suggesting that that some 80% of the country wanted it banned. The two issues couldn’t be further apart, but in one aspect these referendums mirrored each other almost to perfection. 

The spring hunting referendum had likewise been held on the insistence of the losing side… on the same hopelessly misplaced conviction that it enjoyed widespread popular support. 

Personally, I almost expected people to come away from those experiences with a newfound appreciation of just how unpredictable Malta has become as a country. Clearly, threatening a referendum is no longer the same sort of ‘ultimate political trump card’ it was once perceived to be. The Maltese electorate seems to have developed a tendency to defy even the most complacently-held expectations…especially on the sort of ‘moral’ issues now under discussion.

And yet here we are again, faced with another lobby-group that is deluded enough to believe it actually speaks on behalf of some kind of invincible moral majority in this country. And on closer scrutiny: my, oh my, it turns out to include the same people who had insisted on a referendum as an insurance policy against divorce… only to unwittingly hasten its introduction in 2011. 

Among those present at a press event organised by the Malta Life Network this week was Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi... i.e., the man who had originally suggested putting the divorce issue to the wider electorate in the first place. 

“This is not a matter to be decided by 65 MPs,” he had casually told a group of journalists as he stepped out of Parliament one fine morning in 2010. And though he would later desperately try to backpedal from that statement, it was too late: the infernal machine had been set ticking, and the referendum movement became an unstoppable force in its own right.

With hindsight of the result, this also makes Lawrence Gonzi the man without whom legal divorce would simply not be possible in Malta today. So if any of you reading this have successfully filed for a divorce since legislation was introduced… well, you have none other than Gonzi to thank for it.

Even so, this spectacular irony seems to be completely lost on the man himself... though to be fair, it is not clear whether he personally endorses the referendum idea, or whether he just supports the cause for a ban on embryo freezing.

Still, no matter: if it’s a referendum these people want… sure, why not? Let’s go for it. Just don’t come crying afterwards, if it goes the same way as all the others did…

In the meantime: what sort of referendum would you prefer? There are two options available (as we should all know by heart, given the events of recent years): the ‘consultative’ referendum, called by the government when it feels it doesn’t have a clear electoral mandate on any given topic; and the ‘abrogative’ referendum, which legally binds government to remove existing laws.

I think we can safely rule out the former for the time being. Unless, of course, Prime Minister Joseph Muscat repeats Gonzi’s tragic mistake of 2010, and utters some poorly-thought remark that ultimately commits him to holding one. And hey, you never know: Muscat has imitated Gonzi in all sorts of other areas. He has proceeded with controversial ODZ projects in the face of enormous resistance… when only a few years ago he had criticised Gonzi for doing the same… so why not imitate Gonzi’s other mistakes, too? At least it would be consistent…

All the same: it is kind of unlikely really. Muscat already has trouble enough with two unruly backbenchers… which, come to think of it, is another habit he seems to have picked up from his predecessor. It would be rash of him indeed, to also take on the electorate when there is no legal compulsion of any kind to do so.

This leaves us with the abrogative referendum, used for the first and only time in the case of spring hunting… and to date, it remains the only way to force a government to hold a referendum against its will.

In this case, any referendum will have to wait until there actually is a law to be repealed. And it would have to involve a separate petition (on top of the one for the Constitutional amendment) with at least 40,000 signatures.

It would be interesting to see if the signatories to both petitions ending up being the same. This is, in fact, the crux of the entire matter, and the single reason why a referendum on embryo freezing might backfire spectacularly, if it ever gets to be held at all.  

Ever since this embryo freezing kerfuffle first started, there has been a concerted, untiring effort to deliberately conflate the issue with that of therapeutic abortion – something which, Constitutional amendment or no Constitutional amendment, is already illegal in Malta. 

We heard classic examples of this during this week’s press conference: Dr Miriam Sciberras [chair of the MLN] told us that “the introduction of embryo freezing, surrogacy and spermicide [!] and egg donation, would open the door to abortion”. 

Separately, Gonzi reaffirmed that “embryo freezing is equivalent to abortion”.

Both statements are at best disingenuous. Not only are the two issues completely different… but public attitudes towards them are completely different, too.

I am the first to admit that the pro-life movement is probably correct in its assumption of an overwhelming majority against abortion in Malta. But by no means does it follow that the same majority would also oppose embryo freezing. 

If there is a fundamental difference between these issues, it is that embryo freezing forms part of the wider health issue concerning assisted fertility treatment. (IVF remains the best-known example of such technologies, so I’ll stick to that acronym even if it doesn’t cover all medical aspects of infertility). 

‘Abortion’, on the other hand, is a very broad umbrella term applied to the termination of any pregnancy, under any circumstance whatsoever (including natural miscarriage). Even the use of the word by the pro-life lobby has all along been inaccurate: it is narrowed down to describe only one small facet of its broader meaning – the termination of a pregnancy by direct medical intervention – while all along overlooking natural, spontaneous abortions that occur in nature all the time.

And within this restricted and emotionally charged misuse of the word, there is an additional distortion. ‘Abortion’ is used to describe only the wilful termination of unwanted pregnancies for purely pragmatic reasons. This altogether excludes the vast category of abortions necessitated for health reasons… sometimes extending to life-saving interventions. 

But even this glib reduction of such a complex reality to a mindless, automated soundbite… even this simply pales into insignificance compared to the latest paradox to swim into view. Consider the irony for a second. The word ‘abortion’ is now being applied to a medical technology that has, as its ultimate aim, the creation of new life… in cases where, without such intervention, there can be none.

Makes you wonder what these people think being ‘pro-life’ actually means. Here they all are, flying the ‘pro-life’; flag while actively seeking to deprive untold numbers of unviable infants of an actual stab at life… a stab that is made possible only thanks to medical technology, and certainly not to anything these ‘pro-lifers’ can offer themselves.

As for the other assertion, repeated almost as if it were a mathematical formula, that ‘Embryo Freezing = Abortion’… I won’t deny that embryo freezing raises long-term questions, primarily concerning storage. But Gonzi is clearly misinformed, if he thinks that freezing an embryo is automatically equivalent to destroying it.  

It bears mentioning, too, that the word ‘embryo’ – though used correctly – actually refers to life at an entirely molecular level. I point this out because no one in this debate has ever spared a thought for the untold millions of other newly fertilised ova that get aborted all the time, when couples try endlessly to have children without success.

Infertility works in more ways that the obvious, you know. In many cases, fertilisation will indeed take place… but the body will spontaneously reject the ovum as ‘foreign tissue’. IVF sidesteps that problem by fertilising the ovum outside the womb, and implanting it back in at a later, more developed stage.

Indirectly, this means that many couples resorting to IVF would actually ‘abort’ far more often without the treatment, than with it. Ironically, then, limiting the success of IVF could well translate into the destruction of infinitely more human embryos, than were ever frozen (not killed) in the process.  

Ultimately, however, there is another factor that might conceivably result in a nasty surprise for the pro-life lobby, if it is ever granted the thing it so unwisely wishes for. As it demonstrated with divorce, the Maltese electorate is far likelier to empathise with the plight of childless couples, rather than with absurd moral fantasies that manifestly fly in the face of reality. 

Then as now, it would be delusional to act on the presumption of widespread national support.