Does the Maltese law favour the death of the mother in order to save the life of the unborn child? Is this true? Does Malta have out-dated laws weighing up the value of the baby’s life directly against that of the mother? This is not the case.
Every crime in Malta’s Criminal Code, including abortion, is a crime only when the intention of the person is specifically to do what is prohibited by the law. When someone intervenes to save a mother’s life, this can never be interpreted as a crime if the baby dies in the womb as an indirect consequence of the intervention undertaken to save the mother. No one can be forced to die for another person. These are elementary principles of criminal law. Maltese law does allow the mother to be saved when a pregnancy threatens her life.
Proof of this is the fact that no professional has ever been arraigned for saving a mother’s life when her life was in danger and, as a result of the medical intervention, the baby died.
Every year in Malta there are a few pregnancies that can pose a serious threat to the mother’s life. In the last twenty years, no mother has died due to a lack of medical care in a difficult pregnancy. Maltese doctors often perform a pre-term delivery in such cases. In this way, the pregnancy ends and the mother’s life is saved. No one involved in this medical intervention to save life has ever been arraigned. Saving the mother’s life is, and has always been, a priority in Malta.
The doctors taking care of her at Mater Dei took their decisions according to the situation that presented itself. Implying that doctors were going to let the mother die is a gross misrepresentation of the truth.
Maltese law has always protected the mother’s life whenever it was threatened. Any attempt to give a different impression is just an attempt to introduce abortion into Malta in a most devious way.
