Pro-life lobby Gift of Life and politician Ivan Grech Mintoff have been forced to pay a combined €4,000 to the Malta Gay Rights Movement after claiming it was being funded to promote the legalisation of abortion in Malta.

In 2015, Gift of Life and Grech Mintoff claimed that the MGRM was secretly being funded by Planned Parenthood, a major American NGO which provides reproductive healthcare, including abortion.

This is because MGRM had in 2011 received a $10,000 grant from the International Planned Parenthood Federation, of which Planned Parenthood is a member, to develop proposals for a Gender Identity Act, which has since become law.

However, GoL and Grech Mintoff claimed the funding was actually intended for MGRM to lobby for the legalisation of abortion in Malta, for which an IVF law permitting embryo freezing was actually the precursor.

“BREAKING NEWS! Are the Malta Gay Rights Movement being supported by international abortion promoters Planned Parenthood?” Gift of Life posted on Facebook. “The drive to legalise abortion by stealth under the disguise of embryo freezing is now clearer for you to understand.”

Grech Mintoff dedicated a part of his F Living TV show Exodus to these rumours and repeated these allegations on Facebook, stating: “In brief she [representative of MGRM] admits to taking money from murdered children to fund her own personal agenda”.

MGRM subsequently sued for libel and magistrate Francesco Depasquale ruled in their favour this morning, ordering Gift of Life to pay €1,000 in damages and Grech Mintoff to fork out €3,000. In Grech Mintoff’s case, the court noted that his allegations were particularly severe and that, as a politician, he should be particularly responsible to the truth.

In his judgement, Depasquale ruled that MGRM’s $10,000 grant originated specifically from the David and Lucille Packard Foundation, and not Planned Parenthood, and that the link between this grant and Planned Parenthood’s abortion services was frivolous at best.

“The court understands that the topic of abortion is in the public interest and that it can trigger diverging and strong views, but this doesn’t mean that one should just invent arguments and reach conclusions against an entity on the basis of very remote circumstances which are substantially false,” he said.

“Everyone has the right to their opinion, to air that opinion and defend it in public, but no one has the right to twist facts so as to damage their adversaries with the intent of harming people’s trust in them.”

MGRM was represented in this case by lawyers Cedric Mifsud and Gianluca Cappitta.

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Tim Diacono

Tim is interested in the rapid evolution of human society and is passionate about justice, human rights and cutting-edge political debates. You can follow him on Instagram or Twitter/X at @timdiacono or reach out to him at [email protected]