Doctors’ conference to deliberate on terminations, in proposed tweak to law

The government is considering introducing tweaking its proposed amendment to Malta’s abortion ban, by introducing a clinical conference of two or three doctors on decisions requiring the termination of a pregnancy when the mother’s life or health is in danger.

The addition of a conference of doctors, which would include the mother’s family doctor apart from hospital clinical chairs, would add a layer of deliberation over decisions to terminate a foetal life when this endangers the life and health of the mother, just as in cases for the removal of life support.

The proposal could go a long way in assuaging concerns from supporters of Malta’s categorical ban on abortion, which have mounted massive opposition against the life-saving legal amendment.

Under the proposed amendment, doctors will be able to terminate a pregnancy to safeguard the woman’s health and life. Under current circumstances doctors and the woman risk going to jail in such a circumstance. Medical professionals also risk losing their warrant.

Abortion remains illegal but the proposed changes introduce an exception where termination of pregnancy is the result of a medical intervention that is needed when the woman’s health or life are at risk. The threat of jail will be removed for both the doctors and the woman in these circumstances.

The government says these changes will enable a pregnancy to be terminated with legal peace of mind in cases of ectopic pregnancies, situations where the woman develops a cancer and requires urgent treatment and premature rupture of a woman’s waters, among other “serious” conditions.

Malta is the only European state, apart from the Vatican, where abortion is illegal in all circumstances.

But opponents to the Bill, which include the Nationalist Party, the Medical Association of Malta, as well as anti-choice academics who penned an analysis of the law, believe the amendment gives prospective mothers and doctors too wide a berth in carrying out such terminations.

Health Minister Chris Fearne has however dismissed calls for an amendment that would limit the coverage of the bill to women suffering serious ‘physical’ but not mental health complications.

Critics, mainly academics from Malta’s faculties of law and theology, believe the Bill should be restricted to mothers having medical ‘physical’ complications, excluding mental conditions.

Fearne has previously suggested that operating procedures in such life-saving terminations could be examined by parliament’s health committee because they defined concepts such as what constituted a grave danger to the mother’s life.

Malta could be heading for a historic amendment to its Criminal Code, after the case of American tourist Andrea Prudent, visiting Malta on a ‘babymoon’, exposed the weakness of the law.

Andrea Prudente started miscarrying while on holiday in Malta with her partner. Despite doctors telling her the pregnancy was not viable, she was denied an abortion because the foetus still had a heartbeat, putting her at risk of contracting sepsis, a serious blood infection.

She was eventually flown out to Spain where her pregnancy was terminated.

Prudente’s case cast Malta into the international spotlight for putting the woman’s health and possibly her life on the line because of the country’s draconian laws.

Prudente has filed a constitutional case against the state, claiming her human rights were breached.

Prudente has also filed two defamation lawsuits against former Nationalist MP Jason Azzopardi and the right-wing academic Simon Mercieca. Both claimed that Andrea Prudente and husband Jay Weeldreyer contrived their holiday in Malta as a stunt so that her failed pregnancy would create a scandal over Malta’s abortion ban. The lawsuit was filed by Women’s Rights Foundation activist and lawyer Dr Lara Dimitrijevic.

Opposition leader Bernard Grech has also faced flak for his disparaging tone in the House of Representatives, where he did not once mention the name of Andrea Prudente while belittling the case.

“This pregnant American woman travelled more than 20 hours to celebrate her ‘baby moon’ in Malta. I never heard of this baby moon but she called it a baby as well. She wanted an abortion, despite our doctors treating her well and in a prudent way. Her babymoon ended when she went to Spain by air ambulance and then she sued the Maltese state.”

Grech played on her surname to insist it was Maltese doctors who were prudent, adding Prudente was never in danger of dying. “This was confirmed by the State Advocate in his reply to the constitutional case filed by the woman.”

“It is a lie to say she was in danger of dying. She was not removing the very premise on which government’s amendment was built,” he said.