Why are there so many occasions when I hear something and say to myself, in words made famous by Mandy Rice-Davis in 1963: “Well, he would say that, wouldn’t he?”

I was reminded forcibly of this over the last few weeks as various bishops, priests, spokesmen for sundry ‘pro-life’ organisations and many women past child-bearing age joined in the outcry over contraception, and specifically the morning-after pill.

This latest brouhaha in Malta arose when a group of women calling themselves the Women’s Rights Foundation filed a judicial protest against the ban on issuing a licence for the importation, distribution and sale of the morning-after pill (or emergency pill) in Malta on the grounds that it breached their fundamental rights as women.

The so-called ‘right-to-life’ lobby, represented in Malta by a rag-bag of organisations under the banner of the Malta Life Network, immediately said it would campaign against the licensing of the sale of the morning-after pill. This was, they said, “a conspiracy to introduce abortion by stealth”.

A word of caution here. Instead of sticking to rational argument, the so-called ‘pro-life’ lobby in Malta deals in hyperbole. It resorts to misplaced, emotive and inflammatory language. It suffers from an unhealthy ovarian obsession and sees the introduction of abortion – “a holocaust in the offing” – round every corner. Another newly formed entity, Women for Life, takes the paranoia a step further by arguing that the availability of the morning-after pill “would encourage more male rapists”.

The ‘pro-life’ lobby’s moral indignation invariably takes the place of argument. Instead of welcoming the advances of science which have enabled fertile women to decide when to become pregnant and how many children to have, they excoriate them by yelling abortion.

While it is logical to dismiss them as bigoted obsessives, they have been joined in their campaign against the morning-after pill by sundry clerics and the Maltese bishops (although I note that, in a later interview, the Archbishop has begun to tack towards a more intelligent position on the issue).

Rather surprisingly, the National Council of Women, a group which has fought an uphill struggle for women’s rights in Malta for the last 52 years, has succumbed to ‘pro-life’ paranoia and come out against the morning-after pill. In doing so, the NCW has set its cause back half a century.

The overwhelming scientific evidence is clear. The morning-after pill prevents an egg from being released from the ovaries and thus stops fertilisation. It is not an abortifacient and cannot interfere with an embryo once fertilisation has taken place.

These findings have been endorsed by the World Health Organisation, the International Federation of Gynaecology and Obstetrics, the European Health Authority, and is supported by all the latest science.

But the issue is even more fundamental. It is about women’s rights in Malta. This is the crux. Women’s rights have long been obstructed by Maltese men (for it is men in Malta who have held, and still hold, the power).

How can there be equality of the sexes in Malta when women are prevented from taking control over their own reproduction?

How can there be equality of the sexes in Malta when women are prevented from taking control over their own reproduction? Maltese women need more autonomy over their reproductive rights. It must be for them to exercise choice. Why, as somebody asked, should women’s reproductive organs be policed by the government, by the Church and by mainly male-led extremist religious pressure groups?

The judicial protest by the Women’s Rights Foundation is a long overdue milestone for women in Malta. They are rightly taking a stand and demanding more control over their own bodies and their reproductive health. Ensuring women’s health and life choices enhances their socio-economic status and enables them to play a more important role in shaping Maltese society for the better.

The possibility of preventing pregnancy after unprotected sex is a choice which every woman should be free to make for herself, untrammelled by the dead hand of government or Church. Informed free choice should be paramount.

The administrative decision by the health authorities, which goes back to the last Nationalist administration, to refuse to licence the morning-after pill in Malta is a clear breach of women’s human rights. Health authorities, government and Church have no business basing such decisions on their own personal religious views or their own sanctimonious morality.

The time is long overdue for Maltese men to turn their backs on their Siculo-Arab culture, stop fearing the emancipation of their wives or partners and, instead, embrace it.

Women’s human rights are enshrined in international treaty, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, which Malta signed and ratified decades ago. This specifically states that signatory countries are obliged to make emergency contraception (the morning-after pill) available: “It is discriminatory for a State to refuse to legally provide for the performance of certain reproductive health services for women.”

The United Nations Committee overseeing the implementation of this convention has already condemned the Philippines - once Malta’s only bedfellow against divorce, before we took an enlightened leap for social justice by introducing it – for disallowing the morning-after pill. Filipino women, it found were “disproportionately disadvantaged by the inability to access and use the full range of reproductive health services, including modern (morning-after) methods of contraception”.

In a recent development, the (Malta) Chamber of Pharmacists has directed its members to decide for themselves whether or not to dispense the morning-after pill. Pharmacists could be free to abstain from selling the pill, but ultimately the State was obliged to licence it and to provide a legal alternative since there is no legislation in force which authorises them to refuse to supply contraceptives.

It is the duty of pharmacists to provide what doctors prescribe. It is ultimately a decision to be taken by the woman advised by her gynaecologist. As the United Nations committee over-seeing the application of the Convention against the Elimination of Discrimination against Women has said: “If health service providers refuse to [sell the pill] on conscientious grounds, measures should be introduced to ensure women are referred to alternative health providers.”

Similarly, the individual woman’s right in all consciousness to choose to use the morning-after pill (or any other form of contraception) and to expect due respect, support and acknowledgement of those choices from the State is fundamental.

The great Pope Francis in Amoris Laetitia has put the choice for using contraception in the realm of decisions informed by conscience.

The consequences of sex and the use of contraception are often presented as based solely on emotional self-indulgence. Such arguments ignore completely the traumatic anguish of an unwanted pregnancy. It is an insult to the women who find themselves in such a situation to ban them from using the contraception of their choice and an affront to charity and compassion.

The basic rights for women to be free from unequal treatment and discrimination are a civil right. Such rights do not harm others as opposed to merely offending those who may hold certain religious beliefs.

This should not be a doctrinal struggle – as some zealots have sought to make it – but an earnest endeavour to find a just and practical solution to an urgent problem which recognises the paramountcy of women’s rights to make their own choices.

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