Last month a Council of Europe resolution called on member states to allow women freedom of choice in the matter of abortion and to make abortion easier for women, if they had not already done so. The resolution invited member states to lift restrictions which hinder access to safe abortion by creating the appropriate conditions for health, medical and psychological care and offering suitable financial cover.
The resolution was passed in the Parliamentary Assembly of the CofE on April 18 in Strasbourg by 102 votes - one-sixth of a majority of 609 eligible participants. The Maltese delegation, made up of both sides of the House of Representatives, spoke strongly against the resolution and ultimately voted against it, as expected by the majority of the Maltese.
In Africa, in October 2006, under similar severe pressure from pro-abortion agencies and powerful NGOs, African health ministers, gathered in Mozambique, rejected calls for abortion in a new policy paper agreed to at a meeting of the African Union made up of 53 member states, most of which prohibit, or strictly limit, abortion.
The draft version of the African document, like the European one, had attempted to include 'unsafe' abortion in tackling the issue of maternal mortality. AU member states, however, failed to reach an agreement on a unified policy to address unsafe abortion and opted instead to take up the matter individually. Abortion proponents had long argued that a right to abortion should be guaranteed by international law because restricting abortion leads to high maternal mortality.
UN reports, however, such as the 1991 World Health Organisation report Maternal Mortality, A Global Factbook had concluded that decreased maternal mortality rates in the developed world, 'coincided with the development of obstetric techniques and improvements in the general health status of women.'
The Malta Unborn Child Movement, made up of 44 Maltese organisations, points to the clear commitment of Maltese society, the Maltese government and the opposition to deal with these problems not by making it easier for women to resort to abortion, and kill their child, as the Council of Europe report suggested, but by being compassionate, just and helpful to both the mother and the baby in her womb by the further provision of improved educational services, medical and psychological care, health, sanitary and counselling services, fostering and adoption.
Which is what the Council of Europe resolution has also asked for, after all. But no abortion. No killing of any of about 4,000 every year voiceless and defenceless unborn children in Malta and Gozo at any stage of development.