These Europeans are crazy...

“In 55BC, all of Gaul was under Roman rule. All Gaul, that is, except a tiny village on the coast of Armorica…”

If you don’t instantly recognise that quote, it probably means you’ve led a deprived childhood. Not, perhaps, deprived of anything that might be considered essential or fundamentally important to one’s health or material well-being… but close. You will have been deprived of the sheer genius of Messers Goscinny and Uderzo, who in 1961 unleashed the comic book phenomenon called “Asterix” (pictured) onto an unsuspecting world.

Even if you’ve never read the books you will surely be familiar with the basic storyline. Asterix is the indefatigable diminutive hero of the said tiny village on the periphery of the Roman Empire. Together with his inseparable companion – the oversized, dim-witted but generous-hearted Obelix – and aided by a magical potion brewed by the druid Getafix, he singlehandedly defeats the mighty Roman legions in a series of adventures that take him to all corners of the (Roman) world.

Common to all these adventures are a few hallmarks we can all more or less identify with. The first is the underlying assumption that the tiny village in question is perfectly justified in its continued defiance of Rome… and by extension, that we should all automatically side with Asterix in his struggle against foreign interference and oppression.

Naturally, this overlooks the minor detail that Roman rule also brought with it unity and order to what was, by most accounts, an anarchic and unstable assortment of (mostly warring) tribal kingdoms… but hey, it’s a comic, so let’s not get too technical.

All the same, at no point are we allowed to even entertain the thought that the brave Gauls might actually be misguided in their eternal resistance to change. If this illusion is shattered even for an instant, the entire ethos upon which those comic books are built will come crashing down about our ears… whereupon the same books will inevitably lose all the charm, wit and chutzpah which make them so memorable in the first place.

The second ingredient is the reliance on magic, myth and superstition to sustain this clearly delusional belief. What ultimately propels our Gallic heroes to endless victories over the Romans may indeed be their unswerving moral conviction that they are, in fact, on the right side of history. But that is no match for the superior discipline of the Roman army on the battlefield (as Vercingetorix, who also makes a guest appearance in the series, discovered to his cost at Alesia).

Valour needs first strength, then a weapon: so enter Getafix, the amiable village druid who brews a magical potion giving superhuman strength to whoever imbibes it… except for Obelix, of course, who doesn’t need any because he fell into the cauldron when he was a baby.

OK: at this point you might find various elements of the basic plot vaguely familiar. If not, well, Leo Brincat – the indefatigable hero of our next adventure, which takes us right to the very heart of the Evil Empire in Brussels – should hammer the resemblance home once and for all.

For this particular adventure, however, you have to make allowances for a few subtle plot changes. We are no longer in a tiny village somewhere on the coast of Armorica, in present-day Brittany. We are instead on a tiny island in the middle of Mare Nostrum: an island which just so happens to have its own absolute, unswerving faith in the moral certainty of its own positions… and which also very evidently views itself as ‘special’, and therefore immune to the otherwise inevitable vicissitudes of history.

And just like Asterix and co., its inhabitants also have a magical potion which confers the superhuman strength required to actually believe this incredible load of bollocks. But there is a significant difference. It’s not just Obelix who fell into that cauldron as a baby. All its inhabitants – literally, everyone and his Dogmatix – were dipped into it at birth; and as a result the entire island is endowed with an extraordinary inbuilt sense of superiority and invincibility that is every bit as comical as its fictitious counterpart in Roman Gaul.

Hang on, did I say ‘all’? No, that’s not quite right. There is, it seems, a tiny part of that tiny island that continues to resist this hegemonic view of Melita as a Utopia of shared values… but I’ll come to that later.

For the moment, let us join Brincaterix in Belgica, where our hero just singlehandedly fought a battle against the entire European Commission, and – in his own view, at least – emerged victorious.

Leo – nice Roman name, by the way – tells us he ‘took a stand’ against the Commission’s proposed Sustainable Development Goals because they include a reference to ‘female reproductive rights’ (ergo, abortion).

“For the Sustainable Development Goals to be successful, the European Union must be united. However, it did not consider Malta’s position against abortion. Such attitude hinders the cooperation member states should enjoy,” Brincat told the Council of Ministers.

Hm. Ok, let me try and get this straight. Europe must be ‘united’ on sustainable development goals. But one of its member states – that tiny village-sized island that insists it is morally superior to everyone else on the planet, remember? – simply refuses to compromise on its own, utterly inflexible and ‘dogmatix’ position on female reproductive rights.

Malta has the single most draconian anti-abortion law in the world – more extreme even than Chile or the Philippines, where allowances are at least made in case of threats to the mother’s life or health – and rather than concede that this is utterly unacceptable in a European Union which (rightly) views abortion as a women’s health issue, Malta expects the rest of the European Union to amend its own policies to come in line with its own.

And when the EU obviously refuses to comply with such an outrageously arrogant demand, its failure to bow to Malta’s unswerving moral authority is held up as an example of obstructionism to European unity. By Toutatis, Leo thunders, Europe must unite; and the only way for it to unite is to agree to every condition laid down by its smallest and least representative (on this issue, at any rate) member.

Of course, it never enters Brincat’s mind that his own position on this sensitive issue must seem monstrously grotesque and abhorrent to the rest of Europe. On behalf of the entire population of Malta, he is insisting that all European women should be denied access to abortion even in cases where the mother’s life is in danger. That is precisely Malta’s position as it stands – enshrined in Article 166 of the Criminal code – and it is specifically the health aspect of the abortion debate that is being singled out in Europe’s Sustainable Development Goals’.

Perhaps, like many other people in this country, Brincat is blinded to the reality that Maltese legislation poses a serious health risk to women. He may have been lulled by reports that ectopic pregnancies – which would certainly kill both mother and foetus, if allowed to develop to full term – are routinely aborted in Malta without conscience issues, thanks to St Thomas Aquinas’ magical ‘double effect’ principle: the one that says it’s Ok to abort a foetus, so long as your intention was not to abort a foetus.

Clearly, however, he is unaware of other examples of pregnancy defects which also threaten the health of the mother. Cases of foetal anencephaly, for instance, are not aborted in Malta. For those unfamiliar with this unthinkably awful condition, it involves the foetus forming with around 90% of its skull (and corresponding contents, including brain) missing.

Such pregnancies can be brought to full term without immediately threatening the life of the mother. But the child will be expected to die within less than an hour of birth. And this is why such pregnancies are routinely aborted in all other European countries (at least, the ones that actually care about such trifles as human dignity, etc).

Here in Malta, I am told (by a gynaecologist who need not be named) that procedure is for the mother to go through with the doomed pregnancy anyway, whereupon the resulting child will be thrust into her arms so that she can watch helplessly while it slowly dies. I will leave you to imagine for yourself the consequences of this practice on the mental health of the mother (and father) concerned.

Unsurprisingly, Malta boasts the highest infant mortality in Europe by a clear mile, as recent statistics very dramatically indicated. Those same statistics, by the way, are available to everyone else in Europe. So of course, the entire European Union can instantly see that which seems to be invisible to Brincat and nearly all the rest of the Maltese population: i.e., the utter absurdity and gross hypocrisy of his government’s cherished ‘values’.

And yet, a representative of the state with the most woefully inadequate female reproductive rights situation anywhere in the world has just boasted about how he lectured the rest of Europe on how to properly protect women’s rights. And not only did he insist that our system is superior to everyone else’s, in spite of its many manifest flaws… but he even threatened to obstruct the sustainable development goals project, unless the rest of the EU bows its head to Malta’s higher wisdom.

If that were not enough, the EU is also perfectly positioned to compare Brincat’s posturing on abortion with all the other demands his government has made in recent years. For instance, the same member state which loudly proclaims its own pro-life credentials and ‘moral values’, is as we speak also fighting tooth and nail to retain its ill-gotten right to fleece gambling addicts of their cash through locally based international betting companies.

Many of these companies were deliberately attracted to set up in Malta precisely because their own countries – notably France, that quintessentially European ‘den of vice’ – changed their legislations to clamp down on the uncontrolled theft that takes the legally acceptable form of online gaming. But morally upright Malta, of course, simultaneously relaxed its own gambling laws (which were once very strict, under a former Labour government) and amended its tax regime with the stated aim of cashing in on the resulting mad scramble for gaming money.

The rest of Europe could also see (if it bothered to look) how our morally superior and unimpeachable little country has turned into a Las Vegas in the Mediterranean in other ways too. The same country which in Europe fights against women’s rights on ‘moral grounds’, also permitted itself to be overrun with ‘gentlemen’s clubs’ over the past few years… turning a blind eye to a glaringly conspicuous human trafficking racket which sees hundreds of young women, mostly economic refugees from eastern Europe, enslaved to the sex industry.

Does moral Malta care? Oh no. Not as long as the sound of cash pouring into coffers can be heard in the background…

Still, despite this apparent overdose of laughably misplaced and hypocritical moral piety, I for one don’t think Leo Brincat fell into that magic cauldron when he was a baby after all. I think he must have polished it off in a single swig, before hurrying off to Brussels to make a grand clown of himself with the Council of Ministers… and I don’t think we need to look far to discover exactly why, either.

It was after all only a few weeks earlier that that other indefatigable and self-deluded Gaul in this comic book – Simon Busuttilix – accused Labour of not being ‘absolutist’ enough in opposing abortion in Europe. Politically, then, Brincat’s fiery display of ultra-Catholic values had less to do with convincing Europe to change its sustainable development goals, than to make the purely political point that his party is every bit as extremist and inflexible on this issue as the ultra-Catholic PN: thus robbing the PN of what its leader evidently still thinks is an electoral asset in his favour.

And this is at least consistent with Malta’s attitude to abortion in general in one respect. Just as Brincat’s posturing in Brussels ultimately had nothing to with female reproductive rights anyway – he was merely playing to the usual script that is expected of little Maltese politicians in the big EU – so, too, does Malta’s abortion legislation have nothing to do with actually protecting foetuses.

Every year, statistics indicate that a number of Maltese women abort overseas anyway… so as we can all see with our own eyes, abortion is absolutely fine so long as it does not take place here in Malta: you know, our special little island that has shielded itself from the realities of the wider world so successfully, and for so long.

Meanwhile, those of you who remember the real Asterix comics will also remember how they always ended: with a giant banquet, in which the village bard Cacophonix is invariably tied up and gagged to prevent him from spoiling the illusion of a happy ending with a discordant song.

No different here, either. This article does not stick to the usual formula when it comes to abortion, because its author is part of the tiny minority of pro-choice Maltese citizens who are sick and tired of the never-ending hypocrisy surrounding this topic.

So if you carry on reading below, you can expect to find the usual plethora of comments, by the usual coterie of moral crusaders, that will defend this illusion of ‘national unity’ by simply gagging the bard who sings out of key.