Pro-choice campaigners in Malta create lockboxes containing abortion pills

Rights campaigners have affixed lockboxes containing abortion pills to sites across Malta , in a campaign designed to highlight the country’s near-total ban on abortion. The 15 black boxes aim to provide practical help to women grappling with the EU’s strictest abortion laws; anyone who is less than nine weeks pregnant and in need of an abortion is invited to send an email to obtain the location and codes to access the pills. In the first eight days of the campaign, 16 women were in touch, hinting at an unmet demand for the procedure in the southern European country, said Rebecca Gomperts of Women on Waves, the Netherlands-based charity behind the campaign. “It’s just archaic, in that sense, compared with the rest of Europe,” she said. “It’s such a violation of women’s rights that’s still happening there.” The campaign flies in the face of the law, as abortion is only permitted in the staunchly Catholic nation if a woman’s life or health is in danger. The lockbox campaign has stirred debate across the country and prompted one anti-abortion group to tell local media that it would call on police to launch an investigation. Gomperts, a medical doctor who founded Women on Waves in 1999, said she had yet to hear anything from Maltese authorities. But she likened the campaign to the organisations that mail abortion pills to women around the world. “The only thing that we did is to make sure that they’re available there for women instead of having them wait for the mail,” she said. …