This past June, Malta achieved a double pro-life victory: it resisted the latest attempt to break down its legal protections for the unborn, and it vindicated pro-life medical practice—to the point of enshrining it in law.
Malta is the only country in the European Union where abortion is completely illegal. The latest challenge to the policy came last year.
In July 2022, Andrea Prudente, an American vacationing on the island country with her husband, came to the emergency room of Mater Dei Hospital with symptoms of a miscarriage. She was 16 weeks pregnant but had lost amniotic fluid and the placenta was detaching. The baby’s heart was still beating, though the prognosis for the pregnancy was very poor. Prudente was hospitalised and doctors monitored her and her in-utero baby—the baby for a heartbeat, and Prudente for signs of infection (a possible complication of the situation). After a week, the couple decided to airlift Prudente to the Spanish island of Mallorca for an abortion.
A media frenzy ensued, claiming that Prudente had had to seek life-saving medical care outside of Malta. Prudente then filed a constitutional case against the country’s health minister and parliamentary secretary for reforms and equality.
Feeling pressured, the same ministers, in November 2022, announced the government’s intentions to change Malta’s criminal law regarding abortion.
It’s well known in Malta that interventions that end a pregnancy are routinely done in cases where there is an immediate serious risk to the life of the mother, and without doctors facing criminal prosecution. The November bill allowed for these same medical interventions, but went a giant step further, decriminalising abortion in the face of a health risk to the mother.
“This latter part meant that abortion was being stealthily introduced on such grounds as mental health problems which is the usual pretext,” Tonio Borg, of the Life Network Malta and member of the One of Us Executive Committee, explained.
But the Maltese were having none of it, and the pro-life movement there mobilised to make their opposition known and felt.
As Borg recounted, in December they took to the streets with more than 20,000 protesters marching through the island capital of Valletta in opposition to the bill. Malta’s bishop came out for the march and former president Coleiro Preca addressed the crowd. Civil society also protested in writing, garnering 25,000 signatories to a petition against the proposed law.
The establishment cracked under public pressure soon after Christmas. Maltese President George Vella of the Labour Party finally stated that he was not in favour of any law that permitted abortion. Well-known pundits and supporters of the political Left also came out against the bill. They knew they could not stand against the Maltese majority after a poll had found that 58% of voters would not vote for a party that supported abortion.
After two readings of the bill in Parliament, the government finally made an about-face on the proposal and announced a serious revision of the law that had been drafted in June.
“The new provisions are a virtual unconditional surrender by the government,” Borg said.
The original draft had been a subtle carte blanche to allow for abortion under almost any circumstance, but the last version of the bill supposes no real changes to Malta’s protections for the unborn and, in fact, legally affirms the medical practice Prudente was treated with.
It allows for terminating a pregnancy to save the life of the mother, if necessary, but with the stipulations to deliver the unborn baby, if it is viable, and to provide paediatric care. Additionally, unless it’s an emergency, such interventions require the prior approval of three medical experts and must meet the standard of being a “necessity.”
“Following the sworn testimony of the obstetricians who were taking care of Mrs. Prudente, which were published in the media, Mrs. Prudente’s life was never at risk,” Borg explained.
This was the same protocol followed in Prudente’s case. Doctors were monitoring both her in-utero baby and her for signs of complications.
“We have patients like this approximately five [times] a year—and this is the management we use and we’ve had no problems with mothers over the past ten years at least,” John Mamo, a physician and the president of the Malta College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, told the BBC last year.
“There are studies that show that even at this early stage of the pregnancy between 10 to 40% of babies do survive,” he added. “So, with a lady that comes into the hospital, we don’t rush to terminate the pregnancy.”
He said that had Prudente shown signs of complication, doctors would have ended the pregnancy.
“The doctors did not terminate the pregnancy at that point because it was not necessary, and her life was not in danger. Had her parameters changed the baby would have been delivered,” Borg explained. “That is still the position under the new proposed provisions.”
“The pro-life camp works in the interest of life, both lives matter,” he added. “The life of the mother takes precedence if that is what the mother wishes, but all attempts should be made wherever possible to save a viable child.”
Malta has proven, too, Borg noted, that a united civil society can defeat even an entire government captured by ideology.
