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Every year, dozens of Maltese women travel to the United Kingdom and Italy to terminate unwanted pregnancies. The operation at a reputable clinic in the United Kingdom can cost anything between GBP 450 to GBP 710*, including consultation fees. If this is beyond a woman’s financial means, she will have to resort to an illegal clinic that will reduce the costs and increase the risks involved.
The World Health Organisation estimates that unsafe abortions result in 67,000 deaths annually. These women are not dying from an untreatable disease. These deaths are the result of conservative mindsets bent on preaching prohibition as the best means of prevention. The alarming number of deaths has led world leaders at the Beijing +10 Conference on Women last March to commit to providing better health services in this regard.
At the same time as the outcome of this conference is being celebrated by women’s movements around the world, our Minister for Justice and Home Affairs, Dr Tonio Borg, is proposing that the existing ban on abortion is entrenched in the Constitution. The evidence that prohibition has failed lies in the fact that abortion is now legal in most parts of the world. The justification is the acknowledgement that attributing full human rights to the foetus implies stripping women of the right to determine their own future.
To penalise abortion is a form of discrimination. In order to strengthen democracy at a social level, women of every class, race, ethnicity and culture, of all ages, religions and sexual orientation, must be able to control their own bodies and make their own decisions about their lives, and these decisions must be respected by the secular State.
That is quite hard to understand in this country where there is no separation between the laws of the State and the doctrine of the Catholic Church.
The importance of this distinction has dawned on many countries decades ago but the nature of politics in Malta keep drawing us back to the dark ages. The reason why the world condemned extremists like the Taliban in Afghanistan is that they imposed their rigid Islamic beliefs on a nation and stripped its citizens of their basic human rights. The image of female suppression we all remember there is the women covered up in blue burkas, an image that is repelling. When it is about Islamic beliefs we feel comfortable voicing our disapproval but when it comes to Catholic beliefs we bow our heads. In a society that refuses to allow women the choice of whether to become a mother, it is impossible for a woman to reach political, social and economical equality with men.
In the Beijing Conference, 184 governments agreed that “the human rights of women include their right to... decide freely and responsibly on matters related to their sexuality, including sexual and reproductive health, free of coercion, discrimination and violence.” (United Nations 1996, paragraph 96).
The International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) in Cairo in 1994 agreed that “Reproductive rights… rest on the recognition of the basic rights of all couples and individuals to decide freely and responsibly the number, spacing and timing of their children and to have the information and means to do so, and the right to attain the highest standard of sexual and reproductive health.” (United Nations 1995, paragraph 7.3).
The Constitution of Malta guarantees equality between men and women but the marriage of State law and the Catholic guide to living will never really allow women in our society to reach full equality with men. The suppression of women has been the norm in every faith and most governments still bound to adhere to doctrines of faith are now taking steps to address the issue of abortion.
In the Catholic stronghold of Latin America, the Brazilian government is laying the ground for the legalisation of abortion in cases where the woman is an unwilling partner. In Argentina, in spite of pressure from the Catholic Church, the Ministry of Health is distributing 25 million condoms for free through health centres, events and venues.
This is because according to data from the Argentinean Mother and Child National Health Management Agency, approximately 450,000 to 500, 000 women (half of them under 20 years of age) undergo unsafe abortions.
Different sources say that 100,000 to 400,000 women die for reasons related to these underground abortions in Argentina alone. Sources of statistical data for deaths from underground abortions differ due to the clandestine nature of such operations but the reality remains that these are not figures that governments can turn a blind eye to.
Even Iran’s predominantly conservative parliament has approved a relaxation in the country’s abortion laws. The bill allows abortion within the first four months of pregnancy where the mother’s life is likely to be damaged or where the child is predicted to be mentally or physically disabled.
Contrary to what the Islamic regime argues sexual relationships between young men and women exist and local press reports estimate that in this extremely conservative society at least 80, 000 illegal abortions are carried out every year.
The Irish Family Planning Association states that over 6,000 women travel from Catholic Ireland to Britain each year to carry out abortions. Ian H. Jones, the Chief Executive of the British Planning Advisory Service, which sees most of these women, was quoted as saying that, “Tragically, in the 21st century, they are still debating what is for the majority of women worldwide a basic health care need.”
Sadly, in our country, we are not even debating. Due to the complex issues related to abortion and the Catholic values inherent in Maltese society, it is not easy for the people to stand up and say that they believe Dr Tonio Borg’s move to be a drastic one. Yet, statistics around the world prove that banning abortion will not prevent women from having them. It would be a bolder and wiser move for our government to ensure proper sex education, objective counselling to pregnant women and access to safe abortions for women who choose to have them for reasons that only they can judge.
* Figures obtained from Marie Stopes International
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