IN MALTA WOMEN ARE TREATED LIKE WALKING INCUBATORS
Preface: Malta, which joined the EU in 2004, likes to boast of its liberal credentials. After the (long overdue) legalisation of divorce in the country in 2011, it has since become possible for gay couples to marry, and for transgender people easily to update their birth records to reflect their chosen gender. But this is not, by any means, the whole story. . .
Malta is the only country in the EU where abortion is illegal for any reason, including rape and incest (even in Poland, where restrictions on abortion have been dramatically tightened, a woman who has been raped is still, in theory, entitled to an abortion). If a foetus is found to be unviable, or the baby likely to die at birth or soon afterwards, the pregnancy must continue. If the health of the mother is threatened – as in the case of an ectopic pregnancy – doctors will act, if at all, only when it may already be too late.
‘Women are treated like walking incubators’: Malta’s fight for abortion
Rachel Cooke Sun 19 Jun 2022 02.00 EDTLast modified on Wed 22 Jun 2022 06.05 EDT
The island nation is the only country in the EU in which termination is still illegal under any circumstances, forcing women to have the procedure abroad or else risk prosecution. But women’s rights groups are pushing for change. . .
> Women who use abortion pills in Malta are advised to take them orally rather than vaginally, even though this is widely considered to be less effective, the idea being that should anything go wrong, they are not detectable by doctors. “What do I tell a patient if she tells me she’s taken the pills, and that she’s bleeding too heavily? I have to tell them to lie,” says Stabile. “I must tell them to go to casualty and to tell the doctors there that they are having a miscarriage. Can you imagine having to tell a patient to lie like that? It’s immoral.”
> What makes this situation all the more vexatious is the fact that contraception is neither free nor easily available in Malta – and there is widespread ignorance about conception (sex education in schools tends to focus on abstinence and marriage). “Some doctors are still very uncomfortable about prescribing contraception,” says Stabile. “What do you think is the most common form of contraception here? I’ll tell you. It’s withdrawal, because it’s free.”
> Those who seek help are of all ages and social backgrounds. The mean age of those ordering pills online is 29.3. Fifty-two per cent are mothers; 24% have two or more children. . .But however different their situations, they have the same things in common: a fierce sense of outrage at the risks that they and others have had to take; a shared determination that things must change . . ."
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