Science is about facts. But take away values from humans and we become monsters

I could not but agree with the title of Raphael Vassallo (Science should guide all our health policies... including abortion). Unfortunately, the arguments made had nothing to do with science and therefore came to erroneous conclusions.

I too want to commend Minister Chris Fearne, Prof. Charmaine Gauci and all the frontline healthcare and support professionals for the manner in which they have addressed the COVID-19 pandemic, limiting the loss of lives, the low rate of spread of the disease and the overwhelming recovery rate of those infected.

Vassallo pens this success to the scientific approach; allow me to add, a scientific approach guided by strong human values.

Internationally, addressing the COVID-19 crisis has seen two approaches: countries that value life first, and were willing to put “the economy” on the backburner to ensure their health systems can cope with the pandemic and be able to care for every patient, and those countries that have taken a softer approach not to damage economic activity, arguing that the economy was of a higher good, even at the risk of losing more human lives.

Since in our country we overwhelmingly value life, and everyone’s life, be it of an unborn child, an elderly or a vulnerable person, nobody contested the approach taken by our health authorities falling foursquare behind the directives issued by the Superintendent of Public Health, intended to protect the more vulnerable, and who has been able to garner the trust of everyone.

Not so in some other countries, where their philosophy towards life is compromised, where abortion and euthanasia are deemed “health” solutions, placing life second fiddle to so-called choice and freedom, which again are no scientific notions.

Scientific arguments started to be promoted that the pandemic should be allowed to spread like any other flu to gain herd immunity, and that once more then 60% of the population has been infected and survived the disease they become immune, making it difficult for the disease to spread further. The life lost in the process was trivialized through another scientific argument: natural selection. In crude terms, allowing the elderly and weak to die by the wayside is collateral damage; in the meantime the State saves on pensions and long-term health care costs. COVID-19 becomes the scientific process of natural selection rather than a deadly disease. In the same way as abortion becomes reproductive healthcare rather than killing.

These same countries, through their policies, subtly coerce the elderly to feel the need to resort to euthanasia not to be of burden to society and their families, valuing utilitarianism rather than the intrinsic value of every individual. Within this philosophy COVID-19 was a convenience.

I am so proud that this country, despite its many faults, holds highest the value of life from the moment of its inception to its very end, irrespective of whether that life is at its earliest stages of development in a mother’s womb, or at the last breath of an elderly on his or her bed. It is because the nearly absolute majority of our politicians, medical professionals and population read science through the eyes of our human values – rather than utilitarian compromise – that COVID-19, abortion and euthanasia have been kept at bay.

Sweden has been hailed as having taken the pragmatic approach, not going for a lockdown, but rather simply encouraged social distancing, leaving restaurants, hair salons and other shops open, and only partially closing schools whilst prohibiting large events. Denmark, a neighbouring country, went for a total lockdown. Sweden having a population of 10 million, so far had 23,216 cases and 2,854 deaths; Denmark with a population of 5.8 million, had 9,831 cases and 503 deaths. Sweden had 285 deaths for every million while Denmark had only 86. Both countries quoted science for their national approach to the pandemic; what influenced outcomes was the value they attributed to life in their approach.

This same argument ties perfectly with the abortion debate. The World Health Organization is not science, but an organization that was created to protect human life, compromised by political and economic interests. When it promotes abortion as a means of population control, camouflaged in terms like reproductive rights, it does not change the science of what is happening – the killing of an unborn child – but merely seeks to justify it.

Science is about facts. Science tells us that human life starts from the moment a sperm fertilizes the egg, the two cells, a zygote, is a fantastic new human life, with a unique DNA and will uninterruptedly evolve into a foetus, baby, child, young person, adult and elderly person. The first two cells and an adult, now millions of cells, are the same person. That is science – not religion, not morality.

What our moral values tell us is that if that unborn child in a mother womb is a human life, as science tells us, then it deserves our protection as much as a child, a young person, an adult or an elderly deserves such protection, because we are humans who respect each other, and the opportunities everyone deserves. This is why abortion is not a reproductive right, because it does not reproduce but it kills that child that has a right for its own life. There is no such thing as a safe abortion, as an abortion always kills. Health is all about protecting the life of the mother and of the child, as they are equal, and not the choice of one against the other.

Science is not a value but a fact. We are humans: take away our values and we become Frankenstein’s monster.