by Joanna Delia
Abortion is already happening in Malta despite being illegal, says Joanna Delia of Doctors for Choice Malta. She tells Juliana Zammit what the law does is to force women to hide and doctors to wait as politicians play the game of populism with women’s lives.
Joanna Delia (Photo by
James Bianchi/Malta Today)
Abortion is banned in Malta yet, Joanna Delia says, the debate around it is still framed as the woman against the fetus—a contest over who carries more value. But for Delia, a doctor with Doctors for Choice, this is not an abstract argument; it is a daily encounter with women in crisis.
One in four women in the world has an abortion once in her life, Delia says. In Malta, she says, the number of women ordering abortion pills online rose by 11% last year alone. Doctors for Choice’s figures show 667 women received pills in 2025, up from 590 in 2024.
“A doctor’s first priority should be the woman, her body, and her physical and mental health,” she says.” Malta, like every other country, has more or less the same rate of people seeking abortion,” she says. “It was there, it is there, and it will remain,” she adds, saying that those opposed to abortion can keep their opinion but have to understand reality and “stop putting obstacles in the way of women seeking care”.
SOURCE: Malta Today, by Juliana Zammit, 27 September 2026.