Three years after the defeat of their years-long campaign to overturn Malta’s pro-life laws, abortion activists in the last EU country with full protection for children in the womb have launched their next salvo. Having failed to change the law, they are now breaking it. Lockboxes with abortion pills have been set up across the country, and pregnant women have been invited to send emails, obtain a code, and procure the pills.
Abortion is illegal in all circumstances in Malta; the only exception is if a woman’s life is at immediate risk, as discerned by three medical specialists. Malta’s pro-life regime stands as a definitive rebuke to the abortion movement’s claims that countries cannot protect both pre-born children and their mothers; it has one of the lowest maternal mortality rates in both Europe and the world. Not a single woman died during or after childbirth from 2012 to 2023. Malta is proof that abortion activists are lying.
In 2021, however, abortion activists thought their Savita Halappanavar moment had arrived when an American tourist requested and was denied an abortion in Malta after suffering ruptured membranes during pregnancy. She was airlifted to Spain, where she procured a termination via early delivery. The government announced a review of Malta’s pro-life laws; Health Minister Chris Fearne said the case highlighted the need for legal abortion. The domestic and international press joined the campaign with a vengeance.
The initial amendment proposed by the government contained vague language permitting abortion for the purpose of the mother’s “health,” which likely would have resulted in abortion on demand. The pro-life movement mobilized. Then-president Dr. George Vella told me he would resign the presidency before signing a law legalizing abortion. Government officials got emails from over 25,000 people; over 20,000 (4% of the population) protested in Valletta; a coalition of doctors, jurists, and NGOs, and experts lobbied the government to reverse course.
The government backed down. Abortion activists were furious.
In April, the Dutch NGO Women on Waves set up fifteen black lockboxes filled with abortion pills at undisclosed locations across the country and the island of Gozo and began advertising them, claiming that around 600 women procure abortion pills by mail annually. According to the group, sixteen women contacted them in the first eight days, and all of the access codes were used. The ‘campaign’ is a deliberate violation of the law.
Some of the abortion pills have ended up in the hands of pro-lifers, who have taken it upon themselves to find them and destroy them. “We have had brave pro-life women who, of their own free will, contacted Women on Waves to ask for the abortion pills,” Dr. Miriam Sciberras, CEO of Life Network Foundation Malta, told me. “The safe was located and the pills were destroyed. I have seen three out of the fifteen myself, one of which was passed to the police, including the pills, by journalists who were given the location and who were with us to locate and open the safe.
Women on Waves advises women who suffer complications from taking their abortion pills to go to the hospital but not to tell the doctors what had happened. One woman who called the organization to procure the pills to expose how easy they are to obtain was visibly pregnant; when she was asked if she was over 9 weeks pregnant, she simply said no, and the access codes were given. The police have not yet responded to the campaign or the exposé.
