Let’s go back a bit.

In the 19th century, France and Germany became the first countries in Europe to legalise abortion. France’s first abortion law was passed in 1867, and it allowed women to procure abortions when their health was at risk.

Germany followed suit in 1871, allowing abortions in the first three months of pregnancy for medical reasons. They were then followed by Denmark in 1929, Sweden in 1938, and Finland in 1940.

In the second half of the 20th century, more countries in Europe began to legalise abortion. In 1961, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg all passed laws allowing abortion in limited circumstances, such as when the woman’s life was in danger or when there was a strong chance of fetal abnormality.

Similarly, in 1967, the United Kingdom passed the Abortion Act, which allowed abortion in certain circumstances. Just three years after Malta was granted independence from the United Kingdom. Would things be different if we were still under British rule? Who knows.

In Europe – as we all know here in Malta – the right to abortion is not universal.

Poland is the scene of emphatic protests against some of the continent’s strictest abortion laws. Further south, in Italy, some doctors refuse to terminate pregnancies – even in medical emergencies.

Poland has effectively moved to ban all abortions. For months now, Marta Lempart has been organizing protests against the government and the ultra-conservative Christian lobbyist organization ‘Ordo Iuris‘.

Speaking with DW Documentary, she rejects the paternalism of the church:

“Our movement is the reaction to a patriarchal culture, to a patriarchal, fundamentalist state that treats women especially badly.”

In Spain too, Christian fundamentalists are trying to torpedo the statutory right of pregnant women to have an abortion. There are frequent reports of expectant mothers being deliberately deceived about the health of their embryo in a bid to “force” them into giving birth to a severely disabled child.

In Germany too, women seeking an abortion still face considerable hurdles, particularly in rural regions. In the Catholic city of Münster, few doctors are willing to carry out the procedure.

Gynecologist Kristina Hänel runs a practice in Gießen. For years, she’s been embroiled in a high-profile legal battle. Anti-abortionists and public prosecutors say her website is breaking the law. At issue is a controversial paragraph of the criminal code prohibiting doctors from advertising their abortion services. The pro-choice lobby is heartened by the new coalition government’s plan to scrap the offending “paragraph 219.”

But this change in the law won’t necessarily make it easier for doctors to inform patients about abortions, let alone carry them out. After all, fanatical anti-abortionist voices are unlikely to be silenced. Consequently, many doctors simply decide not to offer the service at all.

So where does that leave Malta? Well, we saw Karol Aquilina rant about how the PL are introducing abortion ‘days before we celebrate the birth of Jesus”.

I wonder if Aquilina would think the same if he himself was a woman at risk of dying at the hands of an unviable pregnancy.

I wonder if Aquilina would think the same if he was a woman who had been raped and fell pregnant at the hands of her attacker. Would he and other politicians – not just here in Malta but across the world – be saying the same things?

I’ll stick my neck out on the line here and assume that every woman who has had the misfortune to lose a child , would never choose to do so. It must be heartbreaking.

But if the pregnancy isn’t viable.

Then that must be the toughest of all pills to swallow.

Sometimes you have to be cruel, to be kind.

When my girlfriend became pregnant, we were living in Argentina. At the time, abortion was illegal and limited to risky backstreet abortions.

Before hearing the news, we had joined the ‘Aborto legal’ protest in Buenos Aires: a movement designed to legalise abortion and give women the choice to self-determination over their own bodies.

My girlfriend had previously been diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma (a type of cancer that affects the lymphatic system, which is part of the body’s germ-fighting immune system).

After recovering she was told that she would never be able to have children and was essentially, sterile. We had somehow beaten that medical diagnosis with great surprise.

We didn’t abort our daughter who is now three and half-years-old. My girlfriend and I had however only known each other for a short period of time, we were living in a foreign country and access to the healthcare system in Argentina was dire in comparison to the NHS in the UK. And slightly ‘worse’ in comparison to her native Colombia.

We didn’t know what to do. We were not ready at the time to become parents, that we’ve both agreed on since. And we couldn’t possibly have imagined we’d be in lockdown during a global viral pandemic once she was born nine months later.

In hindsight we were almost shoehorned into having a child. There was no other option at the time.

Our decision may well have been different if abortion was legal. That’s a tough sentence to type, but true nonetheless.

So why have I moved on from talking about abortion laws across Europe and the other cases that were outlined by DW Documentary?

I want to give perspective to those people that may well be against abortion. Yes. Everyone has the right to an opinion. But they also have the right to be offended too.

It does not mean that that same person should live and be forced to live their life, based on the moral outlook of somebody else.

Everyone should have the choice to live freely.

Every single case, every single birth (whilst miraculous as they may be) is different in its own way. The consequences of one pregnancy for one couple will be vastly different to that of another couple.

Whether it’s the family’s ability to look after the child, the viability of the pregnancy or how the pregnancy came to be.

It isn’t for 79 politicians to decide what a woman can and can’t do with her own body. Her own blood. It should be a given right for every person to have autonomy over their body.

So hopefully Robert Abela goes one step further to truly deliver freedom of choice for every woman in Malta and change these outdated, and quite frankly archaic and ancient laws.

It’s time for Malta to legalise abortion. That’s my opinion. Feel free to disagree, but let people live how they wish to.

Should Malta decriminalise abortion?