The mountain and the mouse: 5 reasons why abortion U-turn has diminished Abela

Like the proverbial mountain which made the ground tremble with labour pains, only to give birth to a tiny mouse, on abortion Robert Abela has under delivered.

He may still console himself with going down in history as the first Maltese PM to have tinkered with Malta’s blanket abortion ban by allowing the termination of pregnancy in the very rare circumstance when the life of a woman is at an imminent risk. But he has backtracked on the other principle of the law as originally proposed; that one should not have to wait for the mother to be on the brink of death to act.

Abela’s U-turn may have defused a constitutional crisis, but it leaves him weakened in several ways.

1. George Vella has prevailed over the democratically elected Robert Abela

Various media reports (which were never denied) had indicated that President George Vella was threatening to resign if the original Bill 28 was presented to him to sign after its approval by parliament. Instead of defending the sovereignty of parliament it seems that Abela gave up without a fight.

Faced with Vella’s obstinate threat, Abela had a stark and difficult choice to make. He could have called Vella’s bluff, faced him with the original Bill, and let him choose between his own religious convictions and respect for the country’s democratic institutions.   This would have brought the discussion between the democratically elected government and the presidency out in the open, with everyone having to shoulder grave political responsibilities.

Instead, we were faced with opaque behind the scenes manoeuvres, which ended up with the original Bill being radically changed and watered down.

Had Vella resigned, Abela would still have been damaged, becoming the first Maltese prime minister to be faced by a resignation of a president hailing from his own party. Seen from this angle it was a classic Catch 22 situation for Abela.

However, had Abela gone ahead, although damaged he would have at least stood up for a principle, dispelling the growing perception that he stands for nothing but holding on to his super majority without taking any risk. He simply showed that he had no appetite or stamina to face the inevitable backlash resulting from any meaningful reform.

Instead, by backtracking Abela has reinforced the idea that presidents can block legislation which goes against their moral code by simply threatening to resign without even actually resigning. Abela’s reluctance to face the presidency could embolden future presidents to follow on Vella’s footsteps, in the knowledge that threatening to resign would be enough to stop government from enacting laws which violate their moral code.

2. PN will smell an opportunity in using the two thirds mechanism to ensure the election of a conservative president.

Banking on the two-thirds requirement and Abela’s unwillingness to go-ahead in the face of a presidential veto, the Nationalist Party can cripple Labour’s reformist agenda, by ensuring that the next president follows in Vella’s footsteps.

Malta will be choosing another president next year and Vella’s successor will require a two-thirds majority to get elected to the post – the first time this will happen since the method of selecting a president was reformed.

This means that the next president will need the support of the Nationalist Party. The Opposition can therefore throw its weight behind a candidate committed against any further tinkering of abortion laws.

In a polarised climate this runs the risk of turning the presidency into a battleground between liberals and conservatives like that in the USA with regards to appointments to the Supreme Court. In the absence of a compromise candidate, the Opposition may even propose extending Vella’s term for another five years. But this would also condition Labour’s electoral commitment to commence a national discussion on euthanasia. Vella has already hinted that euthanasia like abortion is a red line he would not cross.

But Abela may now be wary of committing the same mistake Muscat did when proposing Vella in 2019. He can do so by insisting on a prior commitment by any candidate eligible for the post to respect the sovereignty of parliament and thus withhold support for anyone who fails to offer such a guarantee. But getting over the two thirds majority hurdle will be tricky and the country would risk a prolonged constitutional impasse.

3. Abela over-reached by prematurely committing himself not to deviate from the Bill’s two basic principles. He ended up under delivering, a suggestion that he lacks the stamina and conviction go the whole hog.

Abela could have predicted Vella’s reticence in signing the Bill as proposed and could have waited until the expiry of his presidential term, if he was so scared of a showdown – ironically, Joseph Muscat did this in 2014 when the Civil Union’s Bill was delayed until after George Abela’s presidency ended in April that same year.

Instead, Robert Abela raised expectations. He initially blew his reformist trumpet by framing the new law in Labour’s historical  struggle against “conservative forces” which had opposed it in the 1960s. And back in December Abela gave a clear indication that while ready to make changes to the proposed Bill he was digging his heels on “two principles”, from which “we can’t deviate”. These two principles were defined as “the safeguarding of the health of the mother when she’s in grave danger during pregnancy” and “the safeguarding of the life of the mother when at risk”.

Now, Abela finds himself defending a law which has clearly deviated from one of its two original principles. The repurposed Bill 28 ditched the principle that one should not wait for a woman to be on the brink of death to act preventively to safeguard her health from grave jeopardy.

Moreover, it was thanks to the inclusion of both principles that the Bill could address border line cases like that of Andrea Prudente who was not in the immediate risk of death but whose health condition could have deteriorated further to the point where her life could have been endangered.

According to respected gynaecologist Mark Sant, under the new Bill, Prudente would have had to wait for a “massive infection for her life to be in jeopardy and action taken”.  Ultimately by giving up on one of the two principles guiding the law, Abela has shown that he lacked both the appetite and the stamina to carry on a principled fight as he had initially indicated.

4. After framing opposition to the law as symptomatic of the historical aversion to Labour by ‘conservative forces’ Abela has earned the praise of Labour’s historical adversaries while alienating its likeliest allies in future battles.  In so doing he is confusing Labour voters.

Abela now finds himself defending a ‘compromise’ disowned by the liberal voices in civil society who had vociferously supported the original Bill and applauded by those segments in civil society who originally had fought tooth and nail against it. This episode raises a crucial question for liberals and progressives; why should they support Labour if the party is so unwilling to fight for the battles which matter most to them?

Abela already has few friends in Maltese civil society, mainly thanks to Labour’s shortcomings in environmental and rule of law issues.  This was one of the rare occasions where Labour was in synch with liberal civil society organisations, as it previously was when it embarked on enacting the most progressive LGBTIQ+ laws in Europe. In that case Muscat did not settle for the bare minimum, introducing same sex adoptions at a time when surveys still showed that a majority favoured civil unions but not adoptions. But by going the whole hog Muscat gained the gratitude of a forsaken minority and a degree of good will among the liberal intelligentsia.

Abela seemed heading in the same direction, even getting favourable coverage on the international media and nods in diplomatic circles, where the extremely conservative stance of the Nationalist opposition is frowned upon.

One can argue that civil society also includes conservative voices who campaigned against the law and that by winning their endorsement Abela has managed to remove Malta’s blanket ban on abortion with their support. But this comes at the expense of losing the goodwill of feminists and liberals who now feel betrayed.

The final version of the Bill was not a compromise endorsed by the two sides of the debate, but a capitulation which forced government to drop one of the fundamental aspects of its original proposal. Abela knows that the endorsement of the anti-abortion lobby will not last and that his party will remain at odds with the now emboldened conservative forces, but he still preferred their endorsement to that of the party’s natural allies in civil liberties issues.

5.  Abela has unintentionally saved Metsola from a major embarrassment in next year’s MEP elections.

By defusing the abortion issue, Abela has unintentionally saved Roberta Metsola from a major embarrassment in next year’s MEP elections in which her willingness to respect the pro-choice views of the EU parliament contrasted with the intransigent position of her own party.

Had Abela pressed on with the original amendment, the PN’s most valuable asset in next year’s election risked being dragged into a crusade spearheaded by her party. It risked overshadowing next year’s MEP election.

While Metsola has rightly made a distinction between her personal pro-life views and her institutional obligation to respect the pro-choice stance of the European parliament, supporters of her party were urging President George Vella to do the opposite by vetoing the amendment.

Moreover, Metsola had kept a distance from the abortion debate in Malta, fully knowing that the extremist position of her party on this issue is shunned in diplomatic circles. She had also previously tweeted her parliament’s concern on the US Supreme Court decision to revoke Roe vs Wade judgment, which recognised abortion rights in the USA.  And while Metsola’s silence on the Maltese amendment was noted by ultra conservative elements who resent her, Metsola can now bank on her credibility on other issues instead of being dragged into a crusade which risked burning her bridges in Europe... and for this she must thank Robert Abela.