‘Abortion on demand’ – Mark Agius

It is reported that the government is proposing to make further amendments to the Maltese law on abortion. Unfortunately, at the point this article is being drafted it is not known exactly how this new amendment will be framed, but the proposal has been widely tracked in the local press. Previously, the government’s proposed amendment was that abortion would be lawful if the patient were “suffering from a medical complication which may put her life at risk or her health in grave jeopardy”. This was calculated to suggest that the law was meant to allow abortion during late pregnancy when there was a dilemma between saving either mother or child, and the complication was a complication of late pregnancy which might become grave during the time of delivery or thereabouts, thus satisfying the so-called ‘double effect’ principle. In practice, such complications are very rare. However, now, the specification suggested in the new further amendment, that abortion will only be legal up to 24 weeks, changes the proposed amendment entirely. It focuses on the first 24 weeks of pregnancy, when the foetus is not viable, and the likely conditions which the mother might suffer from, and which...