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A proposal to decriminalise abortion in Malta has stirred up a polarised debate on an issue long considered taboo in the country with the strictest abortion laws in the European Union. Independent lawmaker Marlene Farrugia caught many by surprise this month when she presented a bill in parliament calling for the removal of paragraphs in the criminal code that make it a crime punishable by up to three years in prison to have an abortion or assist a woman in having one. Though the law is rarely enforced — the Home Affairs Ministry says the last person jailed for abortion was in 1980 — backe...

No person has faced criminal charges for getting an abortion or providing the means to terminate a pregnancy in Malta in the last five years. Between 2015 and 2020, the police investigated three people for alleged abortions, none of whom were arraigned, they told Times of Malta. Since the year 2000 only three women have been convicted of having an abortion.  In 2006, a 23-year-old Maltese woman was sentenced to three years’ probation. The other two sentences happened in 2014, where one 30-year-old woman received two years’ jail, suspended for four years and another 28-year-old woman was...

When independent MP Marlene Farrugia presented a private member’s bill proposing the decriminalisation of abortion in Malta, temperatures soared, as vested parties on both sides made the case on why abortion should or should not be legislated. However, there is a key difference between decriminalisation and legalisation. Abortion in Malta is legislated by articles 241(1) and 242, which both prohibit anyone from getting an abortion and imposes a penalty on the person who terminates a pregnancy and any person who assists them. A guilty sentence carries a prison term of anything between 18 mon...

Pro-life lobby dubs Farrugia law ‘blatant attempt to introduce abortion’ Life Network Foundation says decriminalisation of three-year jail for women who terminate pregancy, was declaration that makes abortion permissible 15 May 2021, 12:27pm by Matthew Agius Malta’s pro life lobby Life Network Foundation has called MP Marlene Farrugia’s bid to decriminalise penalties for women and medical professionals who terminate pregancies, as “a blatant attempt to introduce abortion into Malta, allowing every pregnancy to be terminated by a mother or medical professional, and the baby in the w...