Following a nationwide campaign run by pro-life campaigners, the two main poliltical parties in Malta, the Labour Party and the Nationalist Party, have both made public commitments to ensure continued legal protection for unborn babies.
In an interview in 2020, the head of the Labour Party and Prime Minister, Robert Abela, said there would never be a referendum on abortion in Malta and that he was “against abortion in all circumstances”.
Similarly the head of the Nationalist Party, Bernard Grech, said that he was “proud that [his] party is in favour of life”, and that he had “never had a problem with swimming against the current”.
He added: “For me the baby [should be] privileged. Because it is a life, a person, who no one can defend more so than its parents, and if one of its parents wants to [end his or her life], it seems to me that I have an obligation as a human, before a politician, that I defend that life”.
Ahead of the election, the pro-life group Life Network Foundation Malta ran a major campaign calling on parties to make their positions on abortion and euthanasia clear to the electorate by posing a series of questions to all the parties.
Their campaign, Ivotta Favur il-Hajja.org (Vote Pro Life.org), published the answers on its website and advertised the campaign on billboards across the country. Where both of the major parties came out firmly in support of the right to life of unborn children, the smaller parties gave mixed responses to the questions.
The Labour Party and the Nationalist Party, however, disagreed about euthanasia insofar as the former party called for a national discussion on the matter, whereas the latter made their opposition to euthanasia clear.
Right To Life UK spokesperson, Catherine Robinson, said: “It is encouraging to see that the two major parties, while ideologically opposed on many things, recognise the right to life of the unborn child”.
