The woman was hospitalized with heavy bleeding at the 16th week of her pregnancy, and doctors told her that the baby had “no chance” of survival, but she was nonetheless denied a life-saving abortion due to the country’s abortion ban.
The woman and her husband are now requesting to be transferred to the UK, which they say is their only chance for the woman to survive. They said the medical staff had not cooperated with their travel attempts yet.
All she wanted was to “get out of the Maltese hospital alive,” the woman told the Guardian.
The 38-year-old started bleeding profusely on the night of June 12 while on vacation. Local doctors prescribed her medication, saying it would protect her from miscarriage, but after two days, the woman’s amniotic fluid was drained and she was taken to the hospital, where she was told that the placenta had partially detached. After 48 hours, an ultrasound found that the amniotic fluid had drained completely and she was told that the baby would definitely not survive, but that the abortion could not be done while the fetus was beating.
The woman said that the Maltese doctors advised her to wait in the hotel until the fetus stopped beating in her heart or until the woman became infected because they could not intervene until after that.
Malta activists remember how similar the case was to that of Savita Halappanavar, who died of septicemia in an Irish hospital in 2012 after doctors refused to terminate her pregnancy due to an abortion ban in Ireland when she began an abortion at 17 weeks. pregnant.
In the European Union, Malta is the only country that prohibits abortion in all circumstances. Those who wish to have an abortion only have the opportunity to purchase abortion pills online or have an abortion in another country. (guardian)
