Recently everyone woke up to the news that Texas had introduced a ban of abortions after 6 weeks, effectively removing the ability to have an abortion entirely, considering when one is able to find out they are pregnant. The news spread rapidly, burning through the hearts of many around the world. A country like the United States, that has allowed people to have abortions for decades, took a gigantic half-a-century-sized step backwards throughout a whole state, and removed access to life-saving reproductive healthcare practically overnight. How could this happen, right under our noses? Where did this come from? What ripple effect will this create?
Well, it happened – reproductive and sexual healthcare is all of a sudden even more lacking for those in Texas who need it, and marginalised communities are even more at risk because of it. People who rely on affordable, life-saving care have been forced to seek aid outside of the place they call home, and this is only for those who are lucky enough to have access to help outside of the state. Following the news of Texas making its greatest attempts to defy Roe V. Wade – and watching the state place bounties on the heads of people who have abortions and those who aid them – many in Malta have been forced to face the fact that the laws that Texans are putting forward are still not as lacking and restrictive as those presently offered on our island. No matter how many times we feel hurt and appalled by what is happening in Texas right now, it is heartbreaking to realise that it is all still worse on our own shores.
It is important to reflect on relative situations. The news from Texas sent shockwaves throughout society for a reason – it is shocking to hear of people’s reproductive rights being taken away so instantaneously. It is shocking to hear of a place deciding to put forward such regressive legislation in 2021. It is shocking to imagine that your country might one day do the same. It is even more shocking to realise that your island has no space to even take these regressive steps, mirroring Texas, because the freedom to bodily autonomy, the right and access to safe and affordable abortions, is simply non-existent. You cannot take a step back when you never gave people the right to reproductive health to begin with.
Malta’s abortion laws, it being entirely prohibited, are right up there with the most restrictive in the entire world. And whilst there are so many people fighting for abortion rights every single day, progress seems to constantly meet obstructions – particularly from those who will never have to have an abortion themselves. It is difficult to fight for one’s ability to make decisions over their own bodies when sexual and reproductive health is so lacking all around them. Pushback from influential people in one’s life, from family members to friends to doctors themselves, propaganda shown to us in schools, and upsetting rhetoric used by anti-choice groups, all result in many becoming used to the notion that lack of access to essential care is the norm, and is actually what is best for people.
Alas, this is entirely false.
Abortion access is healthcare, and when one takes the leap into finding out the truth surrounding the matter, one may begin to see just how regressive Malta’s official view on the matter is. Reproductive healthcare restrictions do not prevent abortions from happening, they just make them far more unsafe and lethal. The notion that making abortion a crime is somehow ‘saving the unborn’ is an utter lie, and based upon false rhetoric spread by groups that want to radicalise people who have anti-choice tendencies – be it for political gain or clouded judgement caused by religious upbringing.
If you refuse to face this even on a base level, then unfortunately you have fallen for the oldest trick in the book. Manipulation of your world view based on the instinct to conserve a world that was harmful to groups of people that do not look or think like you – and one that only benefits people who do.
That being said, this is not a plea to convince you out of that which you believe, it is a call to action for you to simply draw comparisons in how the world reacted to Texas over the past few weeks, and realise what that says about Malta, and how this looks for Malta in the grand scheme of things. Not only are anti-choice laws restricting access to healthcare to people who may be in danger whilst on this island, but they are telling the world that we think what is happening in Texas is okay. Our current official position on abortion communicates to the world that we agree with the people who are currently stripping humans of their rights to their own bodies, in a state that many around the world are currently horrified by.
It has come to the point where one cannot ignore just how poignant these past few weeks have been; where one cannot ignore just how clear a picture this paints of Malta’s abortion laws; where one cannot ignore the thousands of voices fighting for healthcare rights to finally be taken seriously right here on our island.
Abortion, and therefore healthcare, should not be offered to people because of how a country looks on the world stage, it should be given because people deserve to make decisions for themselves – they should be trusted with their own organs, with the paths their lives will take. People deserve to write their own stories. They deserve the right to be prioritised in life or death situations over a group of cells in their uterus.
Those in the US have been thrown into chaos – but someone who grew up in Malta sees their restrictions as everyday life. When will we finally be willing to catch up to the rest of the world? When will our norm move beyond government control of whether one gives birth or not? When will we be willing to face that sexual and reproductive health is of vital importance for quality of life?
Someone in Texas still currently has more rights over their body than someone in Malta, after all.
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Għajjejt u Xbajt is a feminist platform by and for feminists, and those with questions for them. It is a non-judgemental space for all who strive for the same aim: equality and progress. They don’t claim to have all the answers, but are very dedicated to posing the questions. #għajjejtuxbajt
