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Matthew Vella
EU Commissioner-designate Joe Borg has encountered the European paradigm shift. Once a foreign minister clambering for a useless protocol to safeguard Malta’s abortion legislation from any EU law on abortion – the EU has no competence to make such laws – today he learns his trade under the auspices of Poul Nielsen’s Commission for Development and Humanitarian Aid, where the Stamperija’s political erudition on matters such as abortion has no weighting.
“There’s nothing to reconcile,” Borg told MaltaToday on his opposition to abortion and his support of the EU’s stand on the Cairo Declaration on Population and Development – which says no to abortion as an instrument for family planning, yes to safe and sanitary practice in countries where abortion is legal: “As a Maltese I agree that abortion has to be illegal. However it is true that in the EU the countries where abortion remains illegal are in fact an exception, and the states where abortion is legal are in the majority, which I don’t think is good anyway.”
Joe Borg faced an intense grilling at the hands of the European Parliament, where MEPs questioned the commissioner-designate on aspects of his portfolio, including abortion. His alignment with the Cairo declaration runs at loggerheads with the Maltese reservation on the declaration, which states that Malta is against abortion in all circumstances.
As foreign minister, Joe Borg was at the head of United Nations representations which consistently communicated their reservations on abortion such as the UN’s Women 2000 special session, in which Malta joined Honduras, Poland, Nicaragua, El Salvador and Kenya to express reservations on language used on abortion, noting that it is illegal in their countries.
Today an EU Commissioner, Joe Borg says he cannot close his eyes to the fact that abortion is legal in most Member States. “Where this is legal, we have to do our utmost to choose the better of two evils, and ensure proper sanitary conditions in this regard. Once this state of fact exists, it does not mean one is condoning abortion. And I can live with that position at the end of the day. We have to recognise that where abortion is legal there should not be any promotion of the practice as a method for family planning, but also recognise and respect those states where abortion is illegal.”
The Cairo Declaration on Population and Development acknowledges the fact that “abortions constitute a major public health concern for women all over the world” and calls upon governments to reduce the need for abortion as a family planning method. Malta, where at least one woman a week travels to the UK to have an abortion, expressed its reservation on the Cairo abortion clause: “Since abortion is illegal in Malta we cannot condone the practice nor can we say that abortion has to be safe and the buck stops here… when we returned to the EU negotiating table we wanted to ensure there would be no side-door from where abortion would be introduced in Malta,” Borg said.
The abortion protocol, annexed to Malta’s EU accession treaty, gives Malta the legal certainty that EU law cannot change Maltese law on abortion. The EU has no laws on the legalisation of abortion, nor does it have any competence to make such laws, and Member States are not required to legalise abortion as an obligation of membership. The European Parliament does however re-ignite the debate by adopting resolutions on the legalisation of abortion, which are yet, not legally binding. In Malta it is illegal for foreign doctors to offer abortion services under the EU principle of free movement of persons or services, since these remain subject to the laws in which case abortion remains a criminal offence.
matthew@newsworksltd.com
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