Malta’s Answer to the Abortion Lobby

For almost a decade, abortion activists have had the small Mediterranean country of Malta in their crosshairs. Malta is the European Union’s last pro-life haven; abortion is illegal unless a woman’s life is at immediate risk. Yet, contra the claims of abortion activists and activist NGOs, Malta has one of the lowest maternal mortality rates in the world; not one woman died during or after childbirth from 2012 to 2023. 

Malta’s much-condemned pro-life regime proves that nations can protect both women and unborn children. This has presented abortion activists with a conundrum. In 2018, their campaign to legalize abortion ramped up. In 2022, a pregnant American tourist named Andrea Prudente requested an abortion after suffering ruptured membranes. She was refused and flew to Spain instead. The case made international news, with outlets from the New York Times to the BBC claiming her life was at risk.

Abortion activists and their media allies deployed the same playbook they’d used after Savita Halappanavar’s tragic 2012 death in Ireland. Despite three separate investigations (including the coroner’s report) finding that Savita died of sepsis, not because she was denied an abortion, activists used the case to persuade the Irish public to vote away constitutional protections for unborn children by presenting a false choice: You can protect women, or you can protect their unborn babies. You cannot protect both.

Initially, it appeared that this strategy would work in Malta. The government proposed an amendment to the criminal code permitting abortion if the mother’s vaguely defined “health” was at risk. The pro-life movement responded with a massive campaign, including a December 2022 rally of over 20,000—4 percent of the population—in the capital. As I reported at the time: “Government officials got emails from over 25,000 people . . . a coalition of doctors, jurists, and NGOs, and experts lobbied the government to reverse course.”

Pro-lifers recognized that the open-ended term “health” inevitably results in a regime of abortion on demand. The campaign worked. In June 2023, the Maltese government backed down, redrafting the amendment to emphasize that abortion was not being legalized. 

Activists hoped that a judge would do what the government would not. In September 2022, Prudente filed a constitutional case arguing that Malta’s pro-life laws had violated her human rights; she sought compensation and asked the court to declare the country’s abortion laws unconstitutional, in breach of the European Convention on Human Rights. She also claimed discrimination, arguing that her life had been put at risk (a narrative pushed by the international press) and that her privacy had been violated. 

The long-awaited ruling, released this past July 1, dashed those hopes. Judge Miriam Hayman, after examining medical testimony and hearing from experts, concluded that there was no evidence of imminent risk to Prudente’s life and that she had been given proper medical care. In fact, Hayman stated that Prudente had mistakenly convinced herself she would die of septicemia if she did not obtain an abortion following conversations with “pro-choice doctors.” “This poor mother,” she wrote, “was subjected to fear and strong emotional pressure that either the baby inside her would be removed or she would die.”

Hayman then excoriated abortion activists for exploiting the case. “The Court has no hesitation whatsoever in saying that this woman ended up being used by so-called pro-choice people to push forward their call for more extreme legal changes they would like to see, without taking into account her emotional state and that of the father,” Hayman wrote. Prudente, she added, “played ball to their beliefs.” Since the failure of the Prudente case to legalize abortion, activists have launched a campaign to illegally distribute abortion pills.

The Prudente ruling is yet another blow to the Savita playbook. Last year, three Polish doctors were convicted in the 2021 death of a thirty-year-old pregnant woman named Izabella. Activists had claimed that her death was due to being denied an abortion, and massive abortion protests swept Poland. In this case, too, an investigation found that Izabella died of sepsis, and that medical malpractice—not the denial of an abortion—was at fault. Activists had hoped the case would topple Poland’s pro-life regime.

Still, the narrative that laws cannot protect both women and their unborn babies is potent and persuasive. Abortion activists in the United States used this argument to great effect in state-level referendums, and it has been relentlessly pushed by the media. A similar strategy has been employed in the developing world as well. Abortion activists use tragic deaths to demand deliberate deaths; they point to blood and call for more. The fact that Malta (along with Poland) has one of the lowest maternal mortality rates in the world while protecting unborn children in the womb proves that this is nothing but propaganda.