Exception to strict anti-abortion law presented in First Reading

Health Minister Chris Fearne has presented the First Reading of a Bill, which makes abortion possible if a woman’s health or life are at risk.

This is the first step in the parliamentary process after last week government unveiled its plans to relax Malta’s draconian anti-abortion law.

The Health Minister tweeted on Monday that the proposed change to the Criminal Code will ensure that doctors are not shackled in saving a woman’s life if she develops serious medical complications during her pregnancy.

Abortion will still remain illegal but the amendment removes the risk of criminal liability on doctors and women, if pregnancy termination is needed to safeguard the woman’s health or life. The legal amendment does not specify what the medical complications that could necessitate an abortion are, nor does it define the health reasons.

Fearne said last week that medical decisions on termination of pregnancy in relation to a woman’s health will be determined by doctors and patient according to standard operating procedures. 

Historic moment

Malta is the only EU state to outlaw abortion with no exceptions and in this sense, this morning’s First Reading is somewhat of a historic moment, given the Bill is a government initiative.

In the last legislature, independent MP Marlene Farrugia has proposed a private member’s Bill to decriminalise abortion but it was never put on parliament’s agenda.

The proposed change to the law comes in the wake of an American tourist’s ordeal at the start of summer that cast Malta into the international spotlight over its draconian law.

Doctors at Mater Dei Hospital had refused to terminate Andrea Prudente’s unviable pregnancy after she started to miscarry because there was still a heartbeat. Prudente’s health was put at grave risk until she was flown out to Spain, where the pregnancy was terminated.

Prudente subsequently filed a constitutional case against the Maltese state, claiming that the lack of access to medical care had put her health in danger and this breached her human rights.

Fearne had at the time instructed the health department to propose changes to the law that would allow doctors to give the best possible care without running the risk of criminal liability.

READ ALSO: Andrea Prudente | ‘Malta draws you in, only to place you in a position of near death and peril’