Malta’s Biggest-Ever Abortion Rights Rally Shakes 300-Year Ban Ahead of Valletta Showdown

Activists call for abortion law reform ahead of Valletta rally

The façade of the Auberge de Castille was still blushing with the last rays of June sunshine when volunteers began stacking folding chairs and rolling out banners that read “My Body, My Choice – Malta 2024”. By 7 p.m. this Saturday, hundreds are expected to pack Upper Barrakka Gardens and spill down the steps to St George’s Square, demanding that the island’s blanket ban on abortion be replaced by legislation that allows termination in at least the first 12 weeks of pregnancy.

For Malta, the rally is more than another protest; it is the loudest signal yet that the European Union’s strictest anti-abortion law is losing cultural grip. Organisers – a coalition of doctors’ lobby Doctors for Choice, feminist network Moviment Graffitti, and student-led campaign Voice for Choice – say 3,000 have already RSVP’d on Facebook, dwarfing the 400 who marched here in 2022. Police sources told HOT MALTA they are preparing crowd-control barriers normally reserved for festa fireworks nights.

“We are not importing foreign culture; we are exposing Maltese reality,” lawyer and campaign coordinator Dr Lara Dimitrijevic told this newsroom from her Valletta office, a stack of affidavits from women forced to travel to Sicily on her desk. “Every year at least 400 Maltese women board the 90-minute catamaran to Catania. They pay €600 for the procedure, another €300 for accommodation, and carry the secrecy like contraband. These numbers are conservative; they come only from Mater Dei’s after-care records. The true figure is closer to 700.”

The statistics clash sharply with Malta’s public narrative. The island’s 1724 Criminal Code still carries a three-year jail term for anyone undergoing or assisting an abortion. In 2022, independent MP Marlene Farrugia tried to introduce a private member’s bill decriminalising the procedure up to term in cases of rape, foetal impairment, or risk to the woman’s health. Parliament voted it down 63-11; Prime Minister Robert Abela warned any reform must respect Malta’s “traditional values”. Yet surveys paint a shifting picture: a December 2023 MaltaToday poll found 62 % of 18- to 35-year-olds favour legal abortion on request, up from 49 % in 2019. Among over-55s, support languishes at 18 %.

In the narrow alleys of nearby Mdina, where baroque saints gaze from every corner, the generational rift is audible. “I carried seven children and lost two. Life is sacred,” says 71-year-old lace-maker Pauline Cassar, her fingers still weaving bobbin patterns. “But my daughter, a university graduate, says women need autonomy. We argue at dinner, then pray together. That’s Malta today.”

The Church remains influential; Archbishop Charles Scicluna reiterated last month that “the womb must never become a place of intentional death”. But even pastoral language is softening. Parish priests in Sliema and Gżira told HOT MALTA they will not deny communion to protesters, a marked contrast to 2016 when pro-choice activists were publicly refused the sacrament.

Business leaders are watching nervously. Gaming and blockchain firms that relocated to Malta for low taxation employ thousands of young foreigners accustomed to reproductive rights. “Talent retention surveys show 38 % of non-Maltese women under 40 would consider leaving if abortion stays criminal,” says Denise Darmanin, HR director at a St Julian’s tech hub. “We already lose female engineers to Berlin because they don’t want an emergency miscarriage managed under criminal law.”

Saturday’s rally will culminate in the hand-over of a petition bearing 8,500 signatures urging President George Vella, a retired paediatrician, to convene a moral-consensus forum. Organisers have choreographed a minute’s silence for women who died from clandestine abortions, followed by a trumpet rendition of “Għanja Ħelsien”, the freedom anthem normally associated with Malta’s 1979 British military withdrawal.

Whether lawmakers listen is unclear. Health Minister Jo Etienne Abela declined an interview but sent a one-line statement: “Government prioritises maternal health within existing legal parameters.” Meanwhile, opposition Nationalist Party leader Bernard Grech told party radio he is “open to discussion” but ruled out legislation “that normalises abortion”.

Back in Valletta, volunteer Marisa Camilleri, 28, is spray-painting cardboard cut-outs of the island’s eight-pointed cross, now coloured bright green. “We’re reclaiming our national symbol for reproductive justice,” she says. “Malta gave the world the Knights’ hospitality; now we need to extend hospitality to women’s lived experiences.”

As the sun sets over the Grand Harbour, the stage lights flicker on. Whatever the head-count on Saturday, activists insist the genie is out of the bottle. “This is not a single protest,” Dimitrijevic insists. “It is the beginning of a Malta where no woman fears prison for a private medical decision.” The question is whether the fortress city that once resisted Ottoman bombardment can now withstand the siege of its own conscience.