Opinion: I Used To Think Like Those Pro-Choice Youths. But I Couldn’t Ignore the Truth About Abortion Anymore
I watched the first episode of Hot Seat with a lump in my throat.
Nine young people, articulate and impassioned, challenging Peppi Azzopardi on one of the most divisive issues in Malta today: abortion.
Some of them echoed thoughts I once held myself. I recognised their logic. I knew their language. I believed (still do), as they do, in bodily autonomy.
And yet, now—after questioning and wrestling with the facts—I find myself agreeing with Peppi on every major point.
I Understand the Pro-Choice Argument—Because I Used to Make It
I didn’t come to this view overnight.
For years, I saw abortion as a matter of compassion. Of respecting freedom and choice. Like many, I believed a woman should not be forced to carry a pregnancy she didn’t choose.
I absorbed the idea that the foetus was not yet a person—just tissue, potential, biology-in-progress.
These ideas aren’t held out of malice. They’re often the product of concern and empathy.
But compassion, if not grounded in truth, can lead us to support things that cause more harm than we realise.
The Science Changed My Mind
Here’s what I came to understand: from the moment of conception, the foetus growing inside the womb is not part of the woman’s body. It is a separate body.
It has its own DNA, distinct from its mother’s. It has a beating heart after just a few weeks. It responds to touch. It has fingers, eyelids, dreams. It is living. It is human. It is small, tiny— and yet, size is not what makes someone a person.
When people say, “my body, my choice”, they forget that the foetus is not your body. And once I understood that, everything changed.
Bodily Autonomy Is Real—But Not Absolute
Of course I still believe in bodily autonomy. But no right is absolute when it harms someone else. We don’t have the right to harm another person just because they depend on us.
That’s not autonomy—it’s dominance.
If a foetus is a human being—and every credible scientific source confirms that it is—then we must grapple honestly with what abortion does.
Peppi Spoke Hard Truths—With Compassion
I was moved by Peppi’s words in the debate. Not only because he spoke with clarity, but because he spoke with compassion.
He didn’t call for women to be punished. He didn’t use shame. He acknowledged the pain and fear that lead people to seek abortion. But he also named what is too often left unspoken: this ends a human life.
I Don’t Blame These Youths—They’ve Been Misinformed
And yet, let me be clear: I don’t blame young people for defending abortion.
They’ve been raised in a culture that reduces everything to choice and freedom, while quietly avoiding the deeper, harder question: What is the foetus?
They’ve been taught that opposing abortion means opposing women. That science is unclear. That abortion is healthcare.
These aren’t just differences in opinion—they are consequences of misinformation.
In Closing
I say all this not with anger, but with deep care—for women, for truth, and for the young people who are still forming their views.
Please, if you’re reading this and unsure, don’t take my word for it. Look at the science. Ask yourself the question at the heart of the debate—not “Is this convenient?” or “Is this legal” but: Is this a human life?
Because if it is, then no right—not even ours—can justify ending it.
Mariana Debono is a philosophy PhD candidate, a poet and a writer.