The newly elected leader of Alternattiva Demokratika (AD) recently used his inaugural speech to call for a parliamentary discussion on abortion rights in Malta. Building on what the Youth Parliament had said just before he became leader, Carmel Cacopardo underlined that abortion was a reality in Malta as scores of women were going abroad every year to terminate their pregnancies. Malta should stop pretending there was no problem.

Quite fortuitously, to add some substance to the views expressed by AD and the members of the Youth Parliament, the Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights, Nils Muiznieks, on a brief visit to Malta, expressed astonishment about the lack of debate about abortion in Malta. An expert in the art of understatement, he said: “Malta has one of the most restrictive regimes in the Council of Europe… it’s almost a taboo subject.”

Reflecting on the atmosphere of omertà that surrounded Maltese women’s “sexual and reproductive rights”, he added that women’s organisations were fearful of intimidation by pro-life activists or of losing public funding. A report just published by the Council of Europe calls for reform, specifically naming Malta and Ireland, among others.

The population of member states in the Council of Europe is in excess of 700 million people. Eighty per cent of its member states (consisting of over 560 million Europeans) provide abortion upon the request of their female citizens in the early weeks of pregnancy (ranging from 10 to 22 weeks), and allow it under specified circumstances in later periods (where a woman’s life or health is at risk; where there is serious foetal malformation; in case of incest or rape; or “for social, emotional, medical or criminal reasons”). Individual countries’ laws vary widely across Council of Europe states.

All the countries are members of the European Convention on Human Rights. The European Court of Human Rights hears allegations of violations of the Convention, including those concerning abortion. As Commissioner Muiznieks highlighted: “Abortion is a human right… It affects the right to healthy living… It affects the right to bodily integrity… women’s right to private life… to be free of ill-treatment… because very often women who are confronted by such restrictive regimes and policies are ill-treated by doctors, among others… It affects a whole range of women’s rights”.

There may also be lessons for Malta on abortion from the Republic of Ireland, where it has long been a divisive issue in a once stridently Catholic country. Ireland is to hold a referendum on whether to lift or ease the country’s constitutional ban on abortion, one of the most restrictive laws on abortion in the Western world.

Let the women of Malta decide

The Eighth Amendment of the Irish Constitution (“The State acknowledges the right to life of the unborn and, with due regard to the equal right to life of the mother, guarantees its laws to respect… and by its laws to defend and vindicate that right”) was inserted in 1983 – the high water mark for institutionalised Catholic power in Ireland – which gives equal rights to the life of the mother and her unborn child.

Irish women seeking abortions must travel abroad and many go to Britain. However, the Eighth Amendment is now regarded as too restrictive. Opinion polls in recent years have consistently indicated strong support for abortion reform. Last year, in response to public pressure urging change, the government established a ‘Citizens’ Assembly’ of 100 people to consider the need to reform existing laws. The Assembly consisted of 66 citizens chosen randomly, 33 representatives chosen by political parties, and a chairwoman, a former Supreme Court judge.

The great majority of the assembly recommended that terminations should be allowed without restriction up to the 12th week of pregnancy. It also said that terminations should be permitted for “socio-economic” reasons up to the 22nd week of pregnancy in cases where a woman was carrying a child diagnosed with a fatal foetal abnormality (meaning it would not survive outside the womb).

Of the votes cast, 89 per cent were in favour of allowing abortion on grounds of rape or foetal abnormality. 72 per cent voted in favour on grounds of “socio-economic reasons”. The lowest level of support was for abortion to be permitted without any restrictions on reasons, although this still attracted the support of almost two-thirds (64 per cent) ofthe assembly.

The Citizens’ Assembly in Ireland proved that there is a firm belief that all pregnant women should be given a choice and full rights over what happens to their own bodies.

Should Malta follow the path of Ireland? Pace Commissioner Muiznieks, in the Maltese context I’m not so sure this is an issue that it should, or needs to, address.

Those women who do not wish to have an abortion on religious or other grounds are not obliged to resort to termination. But those who, equally firmly, believe in the mother’s supreme right in all conscience (their sense of what is right or wrong) to choose whether or not to have a child are entitled to make their own conscientious choice to have an abortion within clearly laid down legal and medical parameters.

The practical arguments are clear. It is a fact that those relatively few Maltese women who want an abortion – perhaps around 100 each year – obtain one by taking a flight to the United Kingdom or Italy and having it performed there. This has been the way for decades. Abortion by those who want it is therefore already available in practice.

The issue is entirely pragmatic. Is there a burning need for abortion in Malta on practical or humanitarian grounds? The figures don’t appear to suggest there is. While I can see that, as a matter of principle, as Commissioner Muiznieks stresses, the humanitarian and compassionate women’s rights arguments to bring Malta into line with the laws of other advanced Western democracies are compelling, it is overridingly a matter for Maltese women to decide.

Maltese women who want a termination can already get it. Maltese women are already exercising freedom of choice and freedom of conscience unshackled by moral paranoia. But if women feel that the current arrangements discriminate unfairly against those who cannot afford to go abroad, formal steps to introduce a law on abortion should be examined.

Led by the courageous Women’s Rights Foundation, let the women of Malta decide.