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TRUTH? THE WHOLE TRUTH? ANYTHING BUT THE TRUTH.

Since the very start of the Andrea Prudente case, Pro-Choice NGOs have always maintained that given that Ms Prudente’s foetus was non-viable, meaning that it would die anyway, it would be irresponsible to put her to any further risk to life and health by not allowing her to terminate her pregnancy. Ms Prudente was 15 weeks pregnant when she suffered a ruptured membrane that led her to be flown to Spain (reportedly paid by her insurance) the following week to have an abortion there after she was refused one in Malta.

Following the testimony of Mater Dei Hospital’s consultant head of obstetrics and gynaecology, who said under oath that according to studies and developments over the past decades there is now a 79.2% survival rate of the “unborn baby” when the mother’s waters rupture before 20 weeks, the forced-birth activists and supporters, notoriously including Catholic priest Joe Borg, were quick to celebrate victory after only the first day in court and relying exclusively on the testimony of an employee of the State in a court case against the State.

The forced-birth activists and supporters spurred on by Catholic priest Joe Borg, either through ignorance, laziness, intellectual dishonesty or downright malice, and without checking the facts, were quick to publicly insult the Pro-Choice NGOs and call them liars and manipulators (of Andrea Prudente's predicament).

Joe Borg, leading the flock, wrote in his regular column in The Times of Malta on January15 that “medical consultants giving evidence under oath in court tore to bits the web of lies and deceit that manipulators of Andrea Prudente’s predicament spun”.

Only three days later, an independent fact-checking report commissioned by The Times of Malta found that the actual study from which the State’s witness only quoted the convenient parts, actually concluded that “the study does find cases of survival at 19 weeks (but) this was a minority finding” and more significantly that “none of the observed cases at 17 or 18 weeks survived”.  Ms Prudente suffered a ruptured membrane at 15 weeks, so going just by the study used by the State’s witness, Prudente’s foetus at 15 weeks had no chance of survival.

And what did the Pro-Choice NGOs say all along, for which Joe Borg and his flock called them liars and manipulators? They said that Ms Prudente’s foetus was non-viable and it would be irresponsible to put her to any further risk to life and health by not allowing her to terminate the pregnancy. A claim supported by the medical source used by the State’s witness itself.

Joe Borg, in his same The Times of Malta column, wrote that “we prefer to believe things that are in consonance with our established positions. Having them challenged would create dissonance; something that we do prefer to live without. In addition, confirmation bias plays an important role – we tend to look for information that supports what we suspect and discount what contradicts what we want to be true”. It took only three days to prove that at least Joe Borg got one thing right.

Now, if we are to excuse Joe Borg and his flock, and concede that they may have made an honest mistake out of ignorance, incompetence or serious error of judgement, that would be one thing. However, given that Joe Borg etc. have now been proven wrong, intellectual honesty would demand that they publicly retract their defamatory claims and publicly apologise to all those whom they have called liars and manipulators and have now been proven to have been telling the whole truth all along. To utter a false claim out of ignorance is one thing. To persist in that claim and fail to retract and correct it makes it a malicious lie. And the last time I checked, Catholicism still considers lying a sin.

Joe Borg and his forced-birth brigade know what they must do to retain any speck of credibility they may have left. That is, unless they are trapped in cognitive dissonance and still believe their own lies through the force of repetition. And as Joe Borg also said, “repetition is very powerful… (research shows that) the illusion of truth effect worked just as strongly also with those who know that something is not true…repetition may make it sound true”. Will Joe Borg and his flock be able to overcome the power of repetition and not completely succumb to it? Either way, be they confirmed and proven liars or people trapped in cognitive dissonance, until they see their "errors" and publicly correct them, and apologise to those they have slandered, they shouldn't be trusted.




See also: 

Repetition Is Indeed Very Powerful  

A Web of Deceit Indeed, Dear Joe Borg.


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