Guest Post: Women’s Codes – How Unsafe Abortions Happen Every Day In Malta
I was 19 when I got the call for the first time: “My period is late, I’m getting drunk and taking pills just in case,” my friend said. That night, we went out, her drinking and me watching, terrified that the mix of drugs and alcohol would put her in danger.
It only got worse from there. At 23, another friend leaned across the table over a glass of wine and explained how she knew a woman who spent the day carrying heavy boxes. She was pregnant but the baby would financially cripple her, her husband and her parents. When she realised carrying heavy boxes didn’t work, she threw herself down the stairs.
In the book ‘Dear Decision Makers’, women in Malta explain how they planned on hurting themselves to end any potential pregnancies- some rode bicycles over rough roads, others drank, some took too many birth control pills, which can cause severe headaches and vomiting.
Women in Malta have had to resort to these dangerous methods in a country where terminating your pregnancy is criminally punishable by up to three years in prison. We’ve also learned to share these secrets: a code spread over generations on inducing miscarriages with these makeshift methods.
An easier way to terminate pregnancies exists. Abroad, doctors prescribe medicine that ends a pregnancy when taken within 12 weeks. Those who take the medicine can rest safely in the knowledge that they can reach out to their GP if they experience any complications.
In anti-choice Malta, this will mean time behind bars for both the doctor and the woman who seeks medical help. This banal law has meant that for decades, people have resorted to violent and cruel methods to induce a miscarriage. To add insult to injury, women in Malta still do not even have access to family-planning clinics or free contraception.
The only way for women to access abortion healthcare safely is by travelling, usually to the UK.
Reports estimate that around 400 Maltese women go abroad every year to get an abortion. When the pandemic hit, the demand for abortion pills shot up to 248 in 2021, from 173 pills in 2020. Double the number of women requested abortion pills during the last two years, when the world was stuck at home because of travel restrictions.
The highest number of purchases in 2021 came from the 10th district- places like Baħar iċ-Ċagħaq, Pembroke, St Julian’s and Sliema. In 2020, a large number of people who bought the abortion pill were from areas including Swieqi and Madliena. A clear pattern emerges- most people who use the Women on Web services live in areas associated with the middle or upper-middle class.
These women have the resources to look online, have the knowledge to read up about abortion and can read and comfortably understand the pill’s instructions, written in English. What about those Maltese women who can’t speak English fluently, who do not have access to the Internet, who have not come across the English press’ reports on Women on Web’s excellent services?
They are left to their overdoses, their bumpy and rough bicycle rides, their tumbles down flights of stairs and in some cases, even their suicide attempts.
In recent years, women have tried to speak out for help, but they have been met with violence from a fierce anti-choice lobby. Just a few weeks ago, Professor Isabel Stabile, an expert in women’s reproductive healthcare, was physically assaulted just for holding up a sign calling for womens’ rights to access safe abortion.
People with the right amount of money and the right amount of privilege will always have access to safe ways to terminate their pregnancies. Our politicians now need to protect those who have been left in the lurch. Women who terminate their pregnancies can no longer live in the shadow of a medieval law that condemns them to a prison sentence.
Women in Malta can get unbiased information through the Family Planning Advisory Service.
Denise Grech is a member of Moviment Graffitti
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