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Life Network Foundation Tells Brussels: ‘Maltese Values Are Not For Sale’

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Local NGO Life Network Foundation has responded to comments made in Brussels that it is getting funding from extremist groups in the US, Russia and the European Union. Here is their reply in full:

Have you ever been placed in the media spotlight?  Surprisingly Life Network Foundation featured in an article in Lovin Malta last week. Was it a commendation for our charitable work in providing emergency residency to women in need?  Was it for our important and valued service to the women in crisis pregnancy by offering them emotional and financial support? The time and resources given freely by our trusted volunteers? The babies saved? Not quite.”

In an article focused on an EU Parliament committee meeting held in a far-away Brussels boardroom, Life Network Foundation – which supports the charitable women’s shelter Dar Tghanniqa ta’ Omm at Mosta – was implied to be peddling foreign interference. Nobody had asked Life Network a single question, or even invited us to contribute a comment before going to print.

On the other hand, the content of the article, meant to be focused on the situation in our own country, was inflated with quotes from foreign MEPs, and from English activists. Both such sources are completely detached from any form of Maltese reality.

Open Democracy, who is cited in the article as investigative journalists, are in fact a UK activist blog. Their donor list boasts a rich supply of ideological US billionaires, including the Rockefeller Brothers, the Ford Foundation, and the world-leading abortion lobby IPAS.

Indeed, only one lonely voice garnished Lovin Malta’s buffet of international opinion. “Doctors for Choice”, the BBC reported in January, represents around 60 people in our country. Yet they were asked to speak for us all, not “Doctors for Life”, their pro-life counterparts who have over 670 members! The cherry-picked opinion blatantly attempts to override national reality. Surely this is a bitter dishonesty hard for even the most ardent Maltese abortion-supporters to swallow.

It is also worth noting that the same sources who consider mainstream pro-life organisations to be “extremists” coincidentally, have themselves, a radical pro-abortion agenda to push. Labelling pro-life organisations as “extremists” is merely an attempt to discredit the position which they espouse.

Life Network Foundation Malta rejects vehemently any implication of financial assistance from the foreign organisations mentioned in the article published in the Lovin Malta article. On the contrary, we gratefully received a €130,000  grant from our own Maltese Government, over a three-year period, which helps in the running expenses of our maternity home and amounts to approximately €43,000 per year.

Like the absolute majority of our islands’ population, we think that abortion is not the best option for the mother and her preborn child. We think that Maltese women deserve better. This view resonates as an integral and widespread Maltese value. Quite unlike the views in the article attacking us.

Furthermore, in the small print, towards the end of the article, we learn that this particular “journalistic attack” on us is not wholly from Malta; it is, at least partly, paid for by funds from the European Parliament!

How can this be right? That Brussels is funding biased media articles designed to undermine and influence our national laws and values?

Printed words are cheap, but our values are priceless. Buyers beware: the Maltese people are not for sale.

Editorial note: The article in question was part of a content series called Ewropej, which is a multi-newsroom initiative part-funded by the European Parliament to bring the work of the EP closer to the citizens of Malta and keep them informed about matters that affect their daily lives. All articles reflects only the author’s views. The European Parliament is not responsible for any use that may be made of the information it contains. 

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