Unfit for purpose

Malta’s current abortion debate has long been coming. For many years, abortion was simply the scare card used in politics to discredit political opponents.

The voices of those who believed Maltese women should have the right to determine what happens with their bodies were confined to the fringes, or worse muzzled.

The very few politicians who dared to hold pro-choice views refrained from making their voices heard out of fear that they will be lampooned by their opponents and ostracised by their own party.

So, in a sense, the current debate is refreshing, because it has our politicians openly arguing their stands in parliament and beyond, like this country has never seen.

Of course, government’s proposal to introduce exceptions to Malta’s strict anti-abortion law does not go far enough to truly embrace a woman’s right to full bodily autonomy. Nonetheless, it is a bold step that recognises the hypocrisy of the outright ban, which risks putting doctors and women in prison.

The amendment to the Criminal Code aims to give legal certainty that in cases where doctors have to terminate a pregnancy to save a woman’s life, or safeguard her health, no one ends up criminally liable.

Government’s proposal addresses two situations when a pregnant woman is at her most vulnerable – when she has to choose between her health and her child, and worse, her life and her child’s.

These decisions are not taken flippantly and in many cases women opt to continue with the pregnancy with all the risks this brings to their health and life. But women should never be put in a situation where the choice to continue with a pregnancy is imposed on them by the law or any other person.

It is all about giving women a choice to safeguard their health, including their mental health, and their life.

But it seems that while consensus does exist on the ‘life’ aspect of this debate, there is opposition to the notion of allowing abortion if a woman’s health is at risk. The naysayers argue this opens the road to abortion on demand.

In parliament, Labour MP Malcolm Paul Agius Galea, a doctor by profession, laid out the dilemma doctors face in very stark terms. He brought up the example of a woman whose health was deteriorating but doctors could not intervene because her life was not yet at risk.

“What do I tell that woman’s father when he looks at me and tells me: ‘what are you going to do doctor to help my daughter? Why are you just looking at her deteriorate?’”

The law as it stands today leaves that woman hanging on a thread with doctors only able to intervene if her health reaches a point where her very own life becomes an issue.

This is pretty much what happened in the Andrea Prudente case. She started miscarrying and doctors told her the pregnancy was no longer viable. But instead of terminating the pregnancy doctors simply tried to manage the risk until the foetus’s heartbeat stopped, or the body expelled it naturally.

Prudente’s life was not yet on the line but in a cruel and sadistic way we allowed her to linger in the lobby of death.

Prudente was the one case that reached the media and made the international spotlight but like her many other Maltese women have been left in a state of unnecessary risk. It is to these women that we owe a change in legislation.

Within this context, the words of Opposition leader Bernard Grech in parliament truly sound hollow, cruel and disrespectful to women.

Grech’s attempt to ridicule Prudente and not even having the decency to use her name, was a shameful way of trying to win an argument at the expense of vulnerable women.

What Grech did sent a message to the many other Maltese women not to dare raise their voice if ever they end up in the same predicament as Prudente.

ADPD’s Carmel Cacopardo has described Grech’s speech as a symbol of misogyny and utter disrespect towards women.

“It reveals his general attitude towards women as an inferior gender that are not capable of taking their own decisions, even in serious matters that arise from medical problems during their pregnancy,” Cacopardo said. And he is right.

No one expected Grech, who had been at the forefront of the anti-divorce movement 11 years ago, to support the abortion amendment. That would have been too big an ask and he is entitled to hold a contrary view.

But he could have done so by laying out the arguments against the amendment without insulting women. He could have taken a lesson or two from his own MPs Joe Giglio and Mario de Marco on how to put forward the argument in a civilised way.

An Opposition leader who finds no problem in ridiculing a woman in such a way is unfit for purpose.