“It is time for authorities to repeal provisions criminalizing abortion, develop comprehensive regulation of women’s access to legal and safe abortion, and improve the availability of sexual and reproductive health services,” wrote Mrs. Mijatovic.
She compared Malta’s protections for unborn babies to torture and claimed that Malta’s pro-life laws deny women’s basic human rights.
Mrs. Mijatovic has also advocated for the restriction of the conscience rights of medical workers who refuse to abort unborn babies. According to The Independent, its report calls for “safeguarding access to health care in light of conscientious refusals to provide care.”
The Maltese government quickly rejected Mrs. Mijatovic’s claims. In response to her report, the country’s leaders affirmed their support for sexual and reproductive health services, but dismissed the notion that such services include an “intrinsic right” to abort an unborn baby, according to Malta Today.
They stressed that their pro-life laws do not put women’s lives at risk. In its response to the commissioner’s remarks, the government noted that no maternal deaths or abortion complications have been recorded in the last ten years.
“The government has insisted that no one in need of treatment is denied treatment or is turned away. ‘If the mother’s life is in danger, every effort is made to save both lives, and the principle of double effect applies (as in the case of an ectopic pregnancy).’”
But the government also insisted that Malta disagreed with the interpretation that “the right to sexual and reproductive health services includes an inherent right to abortion.”
“It remains the competence of Member States to decide whether abortion should be part of a range of sexual and reproductive health services at the national level, in accordance with the program of action of the Conference on Population and Development,” the government said.
Malta has resisted international pressure to legalize abortion for years. In 2013, pro-abortion groups accused the country of “torture” because its laws protect the lives of unborn babies.
The accusation came from the International Commission of Jurists, a human rights organization, in a report to the Human Rights Council. She also claimed that Malta was unnecessarily endangering women’s lives by banning abortions.
Until recently, a number of European countries protected unborn babies by banning abortions. However, Ireland abandoned its pro-life laws in 2018 and Northern Ireland was forced to legalize abortion in 2019 by the UK Parliament.
Abortions are illegal in almost all cases in Poland, but Malta is the only European country that completely bans abortions.
In a report on Monday, the Council of Europe’s human rights commissioner, Dunja Mijatovic, demanded that Malta legalize abortion on demand and curtail conscientious objection rights for medical staff, according to The Malta Independent.