The Malta Independent on Sunday
DOCTORS FOR CHOICE
Abortion should only be a woman’s last resort
Abortion should only be the last resort for a woman and it is not the only choice available, the Doctors for Choice group told The Malta Independent on Sunday.
In an interview, the two young doctors behind this relatively new group – Alex Clayman and Matthew Drake – said that Doctors for Choice are pushing for the decriminalisation and legalisation of abortion in Malta. They said that they have seen a lot of cases of “massive injustice and massive medical mistakes” because of the present law which, they said, reflects a conservative mentality so at some point has to change.
Asked about the aim of this organisation, Clayman and Drake said: “To have a healthy society, full stop. International organisations have concluded that a healthy society is one that has timely, safe, universal and efficient access to abortion and reproductive health services. The aims of our organisation are fourfold.
“Firstly, education, which means educating our public on sexual health reproduction because we still encounter a lot of people who have no idea how the body works. The second aim is to have free contraceptives available to the public. If you are poor and struggling to make ends meet, your first priority is to provide food and other basic needs for your family, and not to get a €250 mirena (coil). The third is the decriminalisation of abortion and the fourth is the availability of abortion so that women do not have to go abroad.
“We believe that this is the order of things and how they should be done. If you want a healthy society you need to do the groundwork.”
Drake said: “In an ideal world, no doctor would want abortion to happen at any time and, again in an ideal world, no woman gives birth to her offspring without the legal, economic and social support needed to raise the child, but in the real world this is certainly not the case.
“In the world there are many cases where the termination of a pregnancy can be beneficial and we have evidence to back this up from international organisations such as the World Health Organisation (WHO), the International Federation for Gynaecologists and Obstetrics (FIGO) and the Royal College of Obstetrics and Gynaecologists (RCOG). All these organisations agree that the legalisation of abortion there would be a better health outcome for the woman and her family.”
How the group was established
The two doctors said that it all started by talking to two female activists, Francesca Fenech Conti and Adriana Dibben, who wanted to find out if there were any prochoice doctors. Clayman said: “My response was to go on Tobba Maltin Facebook page and posted a message there and about 15 doctors replied within hours. From there, we created a Facebook chat and more doctors started joining in. Then we met Francesca and Adriana again and discussed the possibility of setting up the Doctors for Choice group – such as the one in Ireland – which we eventually did.
Asked how many Maltese doctors have joined this group so far, Drake said that up until now, the number is 41, the majority of whom are women. These doctors vary in age but the majority are young, he said. They come from different medical backgrounds and include gynaecologists, general practitioners, psychologists, consultants and paediatricians. Clayman said that, unfortunately, not all members of the group are comfortable about publishing their name, and he hoped that this would also change.
Drake and Clayman said: “We have not been approached by any political group or have been bought by anyone to advocate abortion.”
Asked if anyone from the government, from Mater Dei Hospital management or colleagues had asked them to keep quiet and not speak about abortion, both doctors said that they had not experienced anything of the sort, although they had seen comments on the social media saying that they their warrants should be removed.
“The fact that both parties are against abortion does not preclude us from stopping our lobbying and sending messages out there to create pressure,” they said. “Things change and societies change. Our next step is to continue to create a healthy public discussion, even though there are people who just want us to shut up and make threats or pass nasty remarks. In general, the feedback is that ‘we should have a healthy discussion, even if we do not agree with you’.
“Also we must tell you that, a few days after this organisation was set up, we received messages from women telling us that they had attempted to carry out an abortion on themselves but had failed and, as a result, had ended up harming themselves and the baby. It has to be said that over 95 per cent of the women who terminate their pregnancy do not suffer from psychological problems. As with any other surgical procedure, an abortion can sometimes result in a bad outcome, but this should not be the reason why abortion should not be available as a choice in a society.”
One of the arguments that the pro-life movement makes is that 100 per cent of the women what have an abortion regret it for the rest of their lives, and this is not true, said Clayman and Drake.
“In medicine and science, wherever you see that something is 100 per cent you immediately realise that it is untrue. The only thing that is 100% proven is that people die.”
When should an abortion be carried out?
“We are not here to give advice to people about when a woman should have an abortion. What we are sure of is that we are definitely against late-term abortion. Doctors should not be suggesting that anyone should have an abortion. If a woman chooses to have one, then that is her choice. If a woman comes to us with a question then, as doctors, we should be able to give them the correct information and tell them what services are available, which at the moment we cannot do.
“For example, if a Maltese woman has a anencephaly pregnancy, where basically the baby is born without a brain, at this stage we cannot tell her that she has two options: that she can either continue the pregnancy and give birth and then her baby will die – within 10 seconds or 10 days – but it will definitely die, or that she can go abroad and have an abortion. As things stand today, we cannot give the woman the full story.”
Both doctors said that the central question here is: ‘Is the foetus viable outside the womb?’
“If the answer is yes, it makes more sense – for a number of reasons – to bring that foetus to term or induce it. No one performs an abortion with the primary intension of killing a foetus. The primary intension is to free the woman from the harm that can be caused, be it social, psychological and/or physical. If the foetus is viable outside the womb then there is no justification for killing it – because it is autonomous and I can understand the argument that that is murder – but it is not viable when the foetus is totally dependent as a person.
“Some people argue with us that they should kill their four-year-old son because he is totally dependent on them. This is a bizarre argument. The only reason why a particular pregnancy should be terminated is to free the mother from the harm that the pregnancy is causing her. We are not sadistic psychopaths or killers.”