[ANALYSIS] The rogue conservatism which keeps defining the PN

At a historical juncture when Labour’s contradictions on social and economic issues are bound to catch up with it on various fronts, ranging from the cost of living to land use, the PN has had a paleo-conservative relapse, putting off many who feel the party is out of touch with their values and aspirations. 

Rubbing salt in the wound, all this is happening despite the generational renewal of the party’s parliamentary bench, showing that although the MPs have changed, ideas remain fossilized. 

There is no other way to look about it. On PGT the PN’s conservatism is not just conservative, but out of synch with popular common sense. Faced with a law to limit screening to nine very serious conditions, valid concerns over the risk of the slippery slope of eugenics have been resolved. What we are left with is a law – similar to that in France and Germany – which enables parents with very serious hereditary diseases to screen embryos to ensure that they do not bring to life a sick child whose quality of life would be horrid. 

This also gives parents carrying these diseases an opportunity to become fathers and mothers without having to worry that their children will live a sad and painful life. That is why it was so easy for Abela to depict his party’s position as pro-family. On this issue Labour is showing empathy, while the ideologically-rigid PN lacks empathy. 

A question of empathy 

In the crude words of shadow health minister Stephen Spiteri, although some of the genetic disorders listed are terminal and would lead to the premature death of the child, others would still allow the child to live for long, even if with discomfort. “Huntingtons’ disease reduces life expectancy, creates social, medical and psychological problems but there are people living with this condition and what do we tell them?” was his glib contribution. 

Contrast this with Robert Abela’s appeal to family values: “We want to give people a chance to build their own families. This is a vote for love, for a more just country.” Probably even someone with a conservative mind-set would find it easier to identify with Abela’s empathic words then with Spiteri’s intransigent approach. 

The question the PN has to answer is simple: should parents risk giving birth to a life with no quality of life? And is such a life of discomfort worth living? 

The moral compass 

Surely even Labour is walking on thin ice when it comes to ethical issues revolving around cellular human life. For simply freezing (instead of discarding) embryos carrying hereditary diseases, in the hope that someone would adopt them, sounds like the wrong way of evading one important reality: that in some circumstances the quality of life of both parents and offspring prevails over the life of a cell. Freezing in this sense is the equivalent of discarding a human cell. In this context ‘freezing’ is a way of avoiding to recognise the fundamental difference between a human cell and a human person. 

And if the yardstick guiding our moral compass is the quality of life of parents and offspring, one is expected to use the same yardstick to other situations. The same yardstick applying to a parent undergoing IVF and at risk of bringing a severely disabled person on earth, should apply to a parent who accidentally becomes pregnant and faces the same risks. For where is the logic in allowing parents at risk of passing on a hereditary disease, to have an embryo permanently freezed, while still banning abortion in similar circumstances involving a parent who got accidentally pregnant? 

And if quality of life is our moral compass, what should we do when faced with realities like teenagers forced to carry on with unwanted pregnancies despite the toll on their mental wellbeing? For now Labour can evade these dilemmas, fully knowing that abortion still defies the popular common sense of the majority. Yet what is good for the goose should be good for the gander and by prioritising quality of life over the rights of cellular life, Labour is indirectly eroding the consensus for Malta’s draconian abortion laws, which technically even ban abortion is cases where the physical and mental health of the mother is under threat. 

This is why the pro-life movement is so vociferous on IVF laws, fearing that the same ethical yardstick applied to PGT can also be applied to many other situations where the quality of life of actual persons can prevail over the life of human cells.  

Nationalist MP Stephen Spiteri

A question of flexibility 

And while one expects the PN to reflect the conservative values of its shrinking cohort of voters, by for example voicing legitimate concerns on the risk of a slippery slope leading to eugenics, the absence of any nuances in the PN’s stance suggests that the party has lost its ability to communicate to a growing segment of the electorate whose values are now more in synch with Abela’s pragmatism.  

In this sense, the ideologically driven and militant pro-life movement may well end up becoming a deadweight holding the PN back from reaching out not just to liberal voters, but to mainstream voters who despite having reservations on surgically aborting a fetus, may be more flexible when it comes to giving couples a chance to become parents even if this comes at the cost of discarding a cell which has no self-awareness. 

What is surprising in this episode is that despite the generational renewal of the PN’s parliamentary bench, none of the new MPs have taken a different approach to the issue and all have so far rallied behind the ultra-conservative banner. This suggests that the party is paralysed. Either all the new PN MPs belong to the same mindset, or debate on such issues is no longer tolerated. 

Sure, one may argue that Labour’s greatest problem is its flexibility and the ease with which it prioritises individual needs and even greed over the common good. For while Labour’s problem is that it prioritises lobbies over the common good, the PN has traditionally associated the common good with the enforcement of a moral code. Moreover one cannot help contrasting the Nationalist Party’s inflexibility on the defense of cellular life with its flexibility on development and environmental issues.  

It is in this same way that the party refrains from taking a clear commitment to raise the minimum wage or revamp local plans and planning policies. Nowunder further pressure by its grassroots to tone done its over-emphasis on corruption, the party risks defining itself as conservative rather than a coalition of people with different mindsets, united by a vision of how the country should be run and modernized, rather than being obsessed by what happens in people’s beds and wombs. 

The PN even does so despite knowing that in Europe, such an attitude relegates it to a loony fringe from which Roberta Metsola had to distance herself to secure her election as the European Parliament’s president. 

Malta seems destined to a political confrontation between a liberal populism which often sways to the right when it comes to satisfying powerful lobbies, and Malta’s own version of Mike Pence. In such a scenario one should not be surprised that many choose to disengage.