Watch: ‘People Outside My Hotel Prayed In Protest’ – Abortion Activist Recounts First Time Visiting Malta Around 20 Years Ago
Abortion activist and Dutch medical doctor Rebecca Gomperts recounted the first time she came to Malta around 20 years ago when she received far from a warm welcome.
“People were gathered outside my hotel praying with candles as a protest against me being there,” Gomperts told Lovin Malta last week in an interview alongside pro-choice gynaecologist Isabel Stabile.
Gomperts’ work as an activist and doctor is widely acclaimed, with different news houses documenting her fight against oppressive abortion laws since the 1990s.
Gomperts started a groundbreaking initiative called Women on Waves through which she would park her Netherlands-registered vessels outside the waters of a country where abortions are illegal to provide women with medication to terminate their pregnancies. She went to countries like Mexico and Ireland and almost came to Malta. The only reason she didn’t was because, during that time, there were constant stories of asylum seekers but drowning in the Mediterranean Sea en route to Malta and she felt it was inappropriate to carry out an abortion campaign where so many people were “being left to drown”.
That being said, she did tease that she might buy or rent another boat and bring it to Malta.
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In 2000, when the Women on Waves campaign was just an idea, press from across Europe asked Gomperts if she’d include Malta in her soon-to-be initiative, to which she replied “Of course”. That caused quite the controversy on the island; a debate in parliament was held, former Social Policy Minister and eventual Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi threatened criminal proceedings and the country’s then-bishop wanted to make Gomperts a persona non grata.
This made the headlines of the International Herald Tribune – owned by Whitney Communications, The Washington Post and The New York Times Company – which helped her raise funds for the first Women on Waves campaign in Ireland.
A few years later, Gomperts says in 2004 however news reports are dated 2007, the doctor was invited to Malta by the founders of the now defunct political party Alleanza Liberal-Demokratika Malta – John Zammit and Emmanuel (Emmy) Bezzina – to give a talk about abortion.
The smear campaign that followed was intense. While this was nothing Gomperts couldn’t handle considering years later she’d be chased by Guatemalan warships, local newspapers were staunchly against her arrvial with many claiming that her talk on abortion was breaking the law.
“Rebecca Gomperts (I prefer to leave the doctor out, since doctors are meant to save lives) is still on a “killing” rampage. When is the woman going to give up? If she honestly thinks that she is dutifully giving a woman the right to kill her unborn child she is sadly mistaken,” MLP Councillor Valerie Borg wrote in an article titled Go Away, Becky published by the Malta Independent in 2007.
“So what if Gomperts received a lot of pleas from Maltese women to welcome abortion on our island? They are all wrong and will probably live to regret it. Hasn’t Gomperts heard of adoption if one doesn’t want a child? Not even a 13-year-old child has the right to kill an unborn child for if the 13-year-old had no wish to be raped, I’m sure the unborn child has no wish to be killed.”
“After hovering on and off for years in our surrounding sea like a vulture soliciting women to go and have an abortion in her ship, Rebecca Gomperts recently visited Malta and gave a talk recommending the legalisation of abortion as a human right,” John B. Pace wrote in a piece entitled Rebecca Gomperts’ Wrong Rights published on the Times of Malta that same year.
Journalists had even criticised her for not wanting to be open about whether or not she’s had an abortion.
That being said, Zammit, one of the men who invited Gomperts to Malta, said that there were many people who wanted to attend her talk but didn’t because they were afraid of being “exposed” by the “nuns and old people” that blocked the entrances.
Gomperts was adamant then, and now, that women in Malta are seeking abortions whether or not the country wants to admit it. Research now proves this.
Thankfully, her most recent visit to Malta last week showed a very different reality. Gomperts was invited by pro-choice gynaecologist Isabel Stabile to join the country’s fifth abortion rally. The two of them agreed that the steps Malta’s pro-choice community has taken in these last two decades have been immense.
People can speak about abortion freely and with a lot less judgement than before. And now, instead of having no women’s rights organisations that support abortions, the Voice for Choice coalition consists of at least ten that fight for it. The country has also been blessed by Doctors for Choice and the Abortion Support Network which provide essential information about reproductive choices to women in Malta.
While Malta’s legislation has arguably gotten worse since 2007, at least the community’s mindset and freedom to fight for this human right has improved. Last weekend’s turnout at the abortion rally is a testament to this.
Stay tuned for more clips from Lovin Malta’s interview with Gomperts and Stabile.
Do you think the Maltese society’s approach toward the conversation of abortion has improved?
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