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10 NEWS Christmas Specials • Women maltatoday | SUNDAY • 25 DECEMBER 2022 From Metsola to Bill 28: how politicians got talking on abortion It was once a taboo subject in the political arena but 2022 saw abortion making it to the parliamentary agenda as Malta was cast in the international spotlight over its draconian anti-abortion law. Maya Dimitrijevic outlines the trajectory of the abortion debate THE tone for the abortion de- bate in 2022 was set early when Nationalist MEP Roberta Met- sola signed the Simone Veil Pact just after becoming Euro- pean parliament president. The pact calls on signato- ries to preserve, promote and strengthen women's rights at European, national and local level. It explicitly calls for guar- anteed access to contraception and abortion. Metsola's decision to sign the pact crossed the Rubicon for Maltese anti-abortion activists, who initially welcomed her as the EP's first "pro-life presi- dent". Metsola, the first Maltese na- tional to occupy such a high position within EU institutions, has adopted a standard reply whenever asked about abortion – her position is that of the Eu- ropean parliament that she rep- resents. Her less than nuanced ap- proach to the ethically thorny subject has put Metsola on somewhat of a collision course with her own party in Malta that remains steadfastly un- compromising on the matter. Malta is until today the only European country, apart from the Vatican, which has a com- plete ban on abortion with no exceptions. This is a state of fact the Labour administration wants to change by decrimi- nalising abortion if a woman's health or life is at risk. But before fast forwarding to the end of the year, it helps to understand how the debate evolved. Outside pressure and the elec- tion Soon after Metsola signed the Simone Veil Pact, MEPs held a plenary debate calling for the right to abortion to be included in the EU Charter for Funda- mental Human Rights. Then in February the Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights Dunja Mijatović called on Malta to decriminalise abortion. She urged the Maltese authorities to repeal provisions criminalising abortion, develop comprehensive regulations to safeguard women's access to legal and safe abortion, and im- prove the availability of sexual and reproductive health servic- es. The government reacted by saying that at the time, it was currently working to improve reproductive healthcare servic- es, however, disagreed with the interpretation that the right to sexual and reproductive health services included an intrinsic right to abortion. With Malta heading for a gen- eral election in March, none of the two major parties referred to abortion in their manifestos but the subject did crop up dur- ing the campaign. And in stark difference to past occasions, abortion was brief- ly touched upon without the leaders of the major parties out rightly dismissing or condemn- ing the once taboo subject. This coincided with a short online campaign launched by the Women's Rights Founda- tion in order to raise aware- ness about difficulties women in Malta encounter due to the strict anti-abortion laws. This online campaign consisted of six animated videos with voice overs of stories sent in by Mal- tese and Gozitan women. Police complaints and plac- ards The newly created Christian political party Abba, led by Ivan Grech Mintoff, filed a police complaint in March demanding criminal investigations into 18 pro-choice activists and organ- isations. Nothing came of these investi- gations and Grech Mintoff filed a second complaint later on in the year, shortly before appear- ing on an episode of TVM dis- cussion programme Popolin in which the topic being debated was abortion. The pro-choice campaign upped the ante in May with a roadside information campaign that saw gynaecologist Isabel Stabile physically assaulted by an anti-abortion activist as she held prochoice placards. Stabile filed a police report over the incident but the case, which was to be heard in No- vember was postponed with no new date set for the hearing. The abortion debate returned to the fore with some intensi- ty as the Maltese parliament debated changes to the in-vit- ro fertilisation law to allow pre-implantation genetic test- ing on embryos for monogenic disorders. PGT-M would allow prospec- tive parents undergoing IVF treatment to have their embry- os tested for particular hered- itary and genetic disorders to ensure that only healthy embry- os are transferred to the womb. Defective embryos would have to remain frozen. Life Network Foundation along with other catholic or- ganisations pushed back, dub- bing the IVF amendment as "eugenics". They claimed em- bryo selection "does not deliver a 'healthy baby' but provides a tool to enable the selection of which baby will live and which baby will be frozen in perpetu- ity." PGT-M was eventually ap- proved by parliament with the Opposition, bar three MPs, vot- ing with the government. Simmering debate But the abortion debate came to a head in June. It started with Malta's newly appointed MP to the Council of Europe, Naomi Cachia, voting in favour of a resolution to protect pro- choice activists from harass- ment and violence perpetrated by anti-abortion activists in member states. The resolution which was Roberta Metsola, the first Maltese national to occupy such a high position within EU institutions, has adopted a standard reply whenever asked about abortion – her position is that of the European parliament that she represents MAYA DIMITRIJEVIC