The reaction to the European Parliament votes on the My Voice, My Choice initiative reveals how abortion lobby groups have taken hold of EU institutions. The local pro-abortion lobby group will stop at nothing to force abortion on Malta, now taking this issue to garner support at EU level. 

We are told that this initiative is about “caring for women,” about “civilisation,” about compassion. Those who opposed it are labelled despicable and shameful, and accused of restricting women’s choices. In a widely shared post, activist Natalie Psaila Stabile echoed this narrative, publicly condemning Maltese MEPs who voted against the initiative and framing their opposition as an attack on women.  

But beneath the slogans lies a deeper and more troubling reality. This initiative is not about safeguarding women’s health. Women have lost their lives too, in licenced abortion clinics, and the most aborted child is the female child in the womb. This initiative is about normalising and financing the deliberate ending of unborn human life, even in countries whose citizens and laws have chosen to protect it. 

Protocol No. 7 of its Treaty of Accession to the European Union ensures that EU treaties or laws do not affect the application of Malta’s national legislation relating to abortion. Why is the will of the Maltese people not being respected? 

Respect for Women is not equivalent to Disrespect for Life in the Womb

The claim – repeated by Ms Psaila Stabile and others – that women in Malta have “only two choices”, illegal abortion or travel abroad, is a false dilemma. Malta already allows medical intervention when a woman’s life is genuinely at risk. What remains illegal is not healthcare, but the intentional killing of a child before birth. 

To speak as though abortion were the only compassionate response to tragedy, illness, or foetal disability is not care -it is despair dressed up as choice. 

We are repeatedly told that “most abortions” involve fatal foetal anomalies or serious health risks. We all know that this is the ‘key” that abortion juggernauts use to introduce abortion on demand up until birth. A diagnosis of disease or disability should never be a death sentence to the patient. A society that responds to disease or disability by eliminating the sufferer is a scary place to live in.  The response to disability and disease is care and support, not elimination. 

Europe Has No Mandate to Override Moral Diversity

Peter Agius was right to insist that abortion is a matter of national competence. The European Union is built on the principle of subsidiarity – that decisions touching deeply held moral convictions belong at the most local level possible. 

Member States differ profoundly on questions of life, family, and human dignity. For the EU to fund abortions in countries where they are illegal is not neutrality – it is ideological coercion through financial means. 

Men, Women, and the Silencing of Moral Conscience

It is also telling that opposition to this initiative is dismissed not on the basis of argument, but on the basis of gender. Three men – Alex Agius Saliba, Peter Agius, and David Casa – were accused of restricting women’s choices, as though moral reasoning, legal responsibility, and defence of the vulnerable were invalid the moment a man speaks.  

This is not feminism. 

It is moral intimidation. 

Shame Is Not an Argument

Invoking “Poland’s and Ireland’s tragedies” without nuance ignores the fact that Ireland legalised abortion not because truth changed, but because fear was weaponised. We are now witnessing the same tactic at a European level: moral complexity reduced to emotional pressure; dissent painted as cruelty. 

But shame is not an argument. 

And compassion cannot be built on denial. 

A Final Word

Those who voted against My Voice, My Choice did not vote against women. They voted for the principle that human life matters, that every child in the womb deserves protection. They voted for a Europe that respects diversity – not one that enforces a single distorted anti life vision calling it “choice.” They voted for a future where care means standing with both mother and child, not pitting one against the other. 

That position is not shameful. It is courageous. 

And the fact that an alternative motion affirming that abortion remains a national competence was supported by 241 MEPs, even though it was ultimately rejected, should give the European Parliament food for thought.