Thousands took to the streets on Sunday to protest against a legal amendment that will allow doctors to perform an abortion to save a woman’s life.
The organisers claimed 20,000 people attended the demonstration. Thousands of ‘pro-lifers’ headed to Valletta to stand up against a potential legal amendment - a hypothetical situation where an embryo or foetus is aborted when a woman’s life is in danger.
You don’t see this type of rage about anything else in Malta. Not for the 20-year-old who was crushed to death under a collapsed building last Sunday, not for the countless women murdered, not for Miriam Pace, not for the thousands of migrants dying at sea…
…Not for Lassana Cisse who was shot by 2 Maltese soldiers for the colour of his skin, & not for Daphne.
There are plenty of things these 20,000 people could be mad about: negligence in construction, rampant corruption, the total lack of environmental protection, the number of fatal accidents caused by drunk driving, authority’s apathetic attitude towards domestic violence, or the justice system that allows murder suspects to be out on bail for over a year.
They could protest against police officers abducting & beating people up, the dozens of child sexual abuse cases within the Catholic Church, elderly people facing abuse & disappearing from care homes, the pathetic state of psychiatric care, or the assassination of a journalist by their own government.
“It’s insulting that, over the past decade of my life, I’ve seen my country go to shit”, a UM Master’s student claimed. “It’s literally next to unliveable at this point. There are no natural areas, there are no public spaces.” She is among the 93% of youths who believe Malta’s environment is getting worse.
“And then they’re going to come out & protest against this? They’re not angry when all these child sex abuse cases come out? They’re not angry when migrants die at sea? They’re not angry when women are raped, murdered, or shot in broad daylight?”
They aren’t. Those that call themselves ‘pro-life’ seem to only protest issues that threaten their Catholic faith.
These people advocate for the unborn because, as methodist pastor Dave Barnhart said, “the unborn are a convenient group of people to advocate for”.
The unborn aren’t people yet; they’ve never made any mistakes & they make no demands of you. The unborn are blank slates, innocent & pure, and you can protect them without going against your prejudices or biases.
But as soon as they’re born, your biases come into effect. When the unborn become migrants who decide to come to Malta, people say it’s their own fault they’re drowning. And when the unborn become women, people say that they got themselves into a nasty situation, or it’s their own fault they’re raped & killed.
So to protect women, we need to stop being sexist. To protect children from systemic sex abuse, we must scrutinise the Catholic Church. To protect migrants from drowning, we need to fight racism.
To protect people from dying under collapsing buildings, we need to accept that the government is corrupt & that politicians care more about money than its citizens.
Protecting the unborn allows people to feel morally superior without having to do any sort of self-reflection or be critical of their own prejudices. It allows them to stand for something without giving up on any comforts they have in life, because the unborn are a demographic that doesn’t exist yet.
It’s the loud voices of this grey-haired generation that makes most of Maltese youth wants to leave.
The Maltese manage to protect stray cats, because you just need to spend a few euros & throw cheap cat food on the floor to feel like a good person.
In the same way, they manage to protect the unborn, because the unborn aren’t yet subject to xenophobic prejudices yet. These people take to the streets to protect the most archaic abortion laws in the continent, & their mindsets are stuck in the past.
Look at photos of the protest & ask yourself, how many women of childbearing age do you see? It’s no surprise that so many youths want to leave Malta in search of a better life. It’s no surprise that so many of our friends have left already.
It’s because of attitudes like this.
Because people would rather protect the unborn, who don’t even exist yet, from a hypothetical situation where abortion is fully legalised, rather than do something about the actual problems in this country.
These people aren’t pro-life. They are virtue-signalling & pretending to be good Catholics when people die on their watch every single day.
But in reality, Maltese ‘pro-life’ people seem to only care about the lives of 2 things: unborn babies & stray cats.
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