Maltese activists on Wednesday met in front of the Maltese Embassy in Brussels protesting the reproductive rights and abortion ban in Malta.
Chanting "my body my choice" and "not the Church, not the State, no one will decide our fate", they walked behind a banner reading kullħadd iħobb lil xi hadd li għamel abort (everyone loves someone who had an abortion).
Demonstrators included members of Moviment Graffitti, the Women's Rights Foundation and MGRM, as well as Labour MEP Cyrus Engerer and his partner, Labour MP and party CEO Randolph Debattista.
Engerer and his Brussels-based team helped coordinate Thursday’s activity and are also assisting Maltese activists planning other events linked to women's reproductive rights and transgender people to be held in Brussels this week.
In 2021 Engerer was the only Maltese MEP to vote in favour of a report identifying abortion as a human right.
Malta is the only EU state that prohibits abortion in all situations.
Addressing passers-by in front of the Malta Embassy building, Claria Cutajar from Moviment Graffitti said Malta still had the most inhumane abortion laws in the European Union, despite being promised a reform that ultimately left the situation for women’s health more desperate than before.
"We know that in Malta, at least one person a day uses abortion pills to self-manage an abortion at home. Abortion pills (mifepristone + misoprostol) are safe and they are on the WHO’s list of essential medicines.
"Yet, abortion remains punishable by three years imprisonment."
It is estimated that some 500 Maltese women purchase abortion pills online every year.
Having an abortion or helping someone get an abortion is punishable by up to three years in prison.
Just last year, a woman charged with abortion at home was given a conditional discharge for three years.
An abortion helpline set up by pro-choice doctors receives one or two calls every day asking for information on how to carry out a safe abortion.
On Thursday, Cynthia Chircop, coordinator of MGRM - Malta LGBTIQ Rights Movement - said the activists gathered in the Belgian capital because the government, which called itself progressive, had turned its back on pregnant people.
"History has shown the true face of abortion: making abortions illegal or hard to access doesn't work. It just means pregnant people don't get safe abortions.
"It also means the most vulnerable will not have access to healthcare and will suffer," they added.
Andrea Dibben, from Women's Rights Foundation recalled the launch of the first position paper to decriminalise abortion on March 8, 2018.
The effort of a handful of activists on that day had created a ripple effect that finally put abortion on the politicians' and government's agenda, she said.
WRF Lara Dimitrijevic told Times of Malta the island's abortion ban disproportionately discriminated against poor, migrant and underage women and girls.
"Affluent people always had means to circumvent our cruel abortion laws, but we’ve seen during COVID that even they can find themselves in the same waters like those less privileged.
"Our abortion ban is counterproductive, hurts women and people that can get pregnant, it does not achieve anything else but provide feelings of fake moral superiority of the privileged few by denying rights to others," she said.