Dissent ensues as Council of Women comes out against morning-after pill

The academic Claire Vassallo has resigned from the National Council of Women, after the independent women’s group came out against the licensing of the morning-after pill, claiming the emergency contraceptive is “an established potential abortifacient.”

The NCW has in the past allied itself with pro-life lobbies against embryo freezing.

“When something is wrong, it is wrong anywhere and the fact that it is possible to avoid legal consequences does not make it right,” NCW president Mary Gaerty said in a statement.

Claire Vassallo's Facebook status announcing her resignation from the National Council of Women

The statement prompted an instant resignation from Dr Claire Vassallo, who said she had “no desire to be associated with a group that prefers to back heavily conservative anti-women institutions.”

So far, support for a judicial protest filed in court by the Women’s Rights Foundation has come from the Confederation for Women’s Organisations (MCWO) as well as the Equality Commission, the Labour Party and Alternattiva Demokratika.

“The morning-after pill is an extension of contraception,” Vassallo said in a Facebook post. “And saves people having to deal with unexpected pregnancy. Over 50 years since these debates were held for the contraceptive pill, only in Malta could we be making them all over again. Shame on you.”

The NCW declared on Friday “a number of NGOs advocating women’s rights have come out against the morning after pill” – namely the PN’s women’s branch (MNPN) and a new women’s group offshoot of pro-lifers Gift Of Life – and that Archbishop Charles Scicluna had called for further clarity on the active ingredients and their effects in the various morning after pill brands.

“NCW has always taken a pro-life position from conception until death, but particularly with the aim of safeguarding the life of the unborn child. A new human life begins at conception. We object to the ‘morning after’ pill on the grounds that it is an established  potential abortifacient…

“We believe that the morning-after pill infringes the right of the unborn child to life. It goes without saying that women have rights over their bodies, but this does not give them the right of life or death over another human being.”

The NCW said it condemned “legal measures” that made a mockery of “our rights as human beings by violating those of the weakest among us.”

One lawyer who has taken it upon himself to defend unborn children against “every violation of their right to life” has taken legal action against the National Commission for the Promotion of Equality, for its position on the debate on whether to legalise use of the morning-after pill.

Tonio Azzopardi filed a judicial protest calling on the entity to desist from giving support based on “scientifically and legally incorrect considerations.”

Patronisingly, the lawyer then went on to say that the commission “also lacked the knowledge of what amounts to discrimination, and therefore much less a breach of fundamental human rights.”