Malta – Joanna Delia: ‘Nobody can take your kidney, but the state controls the uterus’

Abortion is already happening in Malta despite being illegal, says Joanna Delia of Doctors for Choice. She tells Juliana Zammit what the law does is force women to hide and doctors to wait as politicians play the game of populism with women’s lives

27 September 2026
by Juliana Zammit
Video – 30 minutes (in Maltese but YouTube link has English closed captions. Transcript below is an excerpt)

Abortion is banned in Malta, yet Joanna Delia says, the debate around it is still framed as the woman against the foetus—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 11% last year alone. Doctors for Choice figures show 667 women received pills in 2025, up from 590 in 2024.

Continued; https://www.maltatoday.com.mt/news/interview/144631/watch__joanna_delia_nobody_can_take_your_kidney_but_the_state_controls_the_uterus_

27.09.2026

Interviews/Podcasts

Videos/Images

Doctors For Choice Malta

Joanna Delia

Malta Medical Council

World Health Organisation

Hope Ngumezi Took His Wife Porsha to a Texas Hospital for a Miscarriage. She Left in a Body Bag.

8/18/2026
by Bonnie Fuller

A devastated Texas dad says his wife’s death after a miscarriage was preventable—and that the state’s abortion ban helped create the dangerous “gray area” that kept doctors from giving her the care she needed.

Hope Ngumezi shares with journalist Bonnie Fuller how his pregnant wife, Porsha, bled to death while waiting in agony for hours for medical care.

Continued: https://msmagazine.com/2026/08/18/texas-hospital-miscarriage-hope-porsha-ngumezi/

18.08.2026

Commentary

Interviews/Podcasts

Dr. Andrew Ryan Davis

Australia – Improving access to medical abortion in rural and remote areas

Aug 14, 2026
Dr Preeya Alexander, ABC Radio National
Podcast – 6:20 minutes

A recent study shows a lack of access to medical abortion care for women living in rural and remote areas, as discussed in our earlier story, Access to medical abortion still lacking.

We followed up with the college that upholds best practice in rural and remote care, to see how this is being addressed.

Guest: Dr Rod Martin, President, Australian College of Rural and Remote Medicine

Continued: https://www.abc.net.au/listen/programs/healthreport/improving-access-to-medical-abortion-in-remote-and-rural-areas/107032504

14.08.2026

Interviews/Podcasts

Australian College of Rural and Remote Medicine

Meet the new Director of the Ipas Collaborative Fund

A Q&A with Dr. Anita Nyanjong

Aug 11, 2026
Ipas

The Ipas Collaborative Fund is a central part of Ipas’s approach to advancing reproductive justice and supporting locally led change. As we work to grow the Fund and its impact, our own Dr. Anita Nyanjong, PhD has been appointed as the first-ever director.

Dr. Nyanjong is a human rights lawyer, global development and feminist leader with more than 17 years of experience spanning reproductive justice, gender equality, philanthropy and grantmaking, strategic partnerships, resource mobilization and locally led development across Africa and globally. Most recently, she worked at Ipas on strategic business development and partnerships and the global CTS Nexus (Child Marriage, Teen Pregnancy and School Dropout) initiative.

Continued: https://www.ipas.org/news/ipas-collaborative-fund-director/

11.08.2026

Interviews/Podcasts

Dr. Anita Nyanjong

Ipas Collaborative Fund

Empowering Ethiopian Health: Sustainable Models and Domestic Financing

By Sisay Sahlu
June 20, 2026

For more than three decades, MSI Ethiopia has stood at the forefront of advancing reproductive healthcare and family planning across the nation. Dr. Abebe Shibru, country director for MSI Ethiopia Reproductive Choices (formerly Marie Stopes International Ethiopia), spoke with The Reporter’s Sisay Sahlu about his leadership and the organisation’s strategic shift amidst global financial cuts for the health sector.

The Director explained how MSI Ethiopia is transforming from a donor-dependent model into a financially self-sustaining social enterprise, reinvesting domestic revenue into outreach programs that reach Ethiopia’s most underserved communities. By partnering with religious and community leaders, as well as likeminded civic service organizations MSI Ethiopia has successfully challenged cultural misconceptions, expanded public awareness, and contributed to landmark policy reforms that drastically reduced maternal mortality and deaths by advancing choices of reproductive health.

Continued: https://www.thereporterethiopia.com/51277/

20.06.2026

Interviews/Podcasts

Dr. Abebe Shibru

Marie Stopes International Ethiopia

MALTA: ‘Young people see the value in protecting women’s health over enforcing religious doctrine’

Natalie Psaila Stabile | MALTA
29.May.2026

CIVICUS discusses the Women on Waves campaign to expand access to abortion with Dr Natalie Psaila Stabile, a reproductive rights advocate and member of Doctors for Choice Malta, an organisation that campaigns for the decriminalisation of abortion and access to reproductive healthcare.

In April 2026, the international reproductive rights organisation Women on Waves placed safes containing abortion pills at undisclosed locations across Malta, prompting calls from civil society groups opposed to abortion for the authorities to investigate. The intervention coincided with a broader European debate over cross-border access to reproductive healthcare, intensifying scrutiny of Malta’s restrictive legal framework.

Continued: https://lens.civicus.org/interview/malta-young-people-see-the-value-in-protecting-womens-health-over-enforcing-religious-doctrine/

29.05.2026

Interviews/Podcasts

Doctors For Choice Malta

Dr Natalie Psaila

Natalie Psaila Stabile

Global – ‘These are no longer amateurs with billboards’

EPF Director Neil Datta on the growing power of anti-gender movements, their increasing professionalisation and the role of religion

May 26, 2026
IPS Journal

You describe today’s anti-gender movement as ‘the next wave’. What is meant by this?

By ‘the next wave’, I mean that in terms of the anti-gender movement – the movement against sexual and reproductive rights, sexual minorities, gender and children – we’re dealing with a fundamentally different movement than what we had become accustomed to. We used to think of it as religious social conservatism, mainly about accommodating certain social values. But what we are dealing with now is a highly organised, strategic political movement with clear ambitions to gain access to power and reshape society.

That is what we need to understand about this ‘next wave’. It is no longer the past anti-abortion activism. It is a political project that is pushing societies towards de-democratisation.

Continued: https://www.ips-journal.eu/interviews/these-are-no-longer-amateurs-with-billboards-9063/

USA – They Came for Mifepristone. The Abortion Rights Movement Is Ready.

As the abortion pill heads back to the Supreme Court, advocates have a backup that’s effective and safe: misoprostol alone.

Nina Martin, Mother Jones
May 7, 2026

Medication abortion is back at the US Supreme Court—which is exactly where abortion opponents want it. Last week, in a late Friday afternoon move guaranteed to stoke maximum confusion and panic, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals blocked a Food and Drug Administration rule allowing telemedicine prescription of mifepristone, one of two drugs that make up the gold-standard abortion-pill regimen. On Monday morning, Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito put that ruling on pause until May 11.

But even as abortion advocates expressed relief that telemedicine abortions can continue for a few more days, the order by Alito—the same ultraconservative who wrote the Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade in 2022—was at best a reprieve. At some point soon, the court’s right-wing supermajority could drastically curtail or cut off access by mail to an extremely safe and effective drug that has been used by hundreds of thousands of women a year since Dobbs, including in states where abortion is banned. Almost two-thirds of abortions in the US now happen with pills, and nearly 30 percent occur by telemedicine.

Continued; https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2026/05/they-came-for-mifepristone-the-abortion-rights-movement-is-ready/

Progress and Limitations of the “My Voice, My Choice” Initiative: An Interview with Clara Serra Baiget

April 2, 2026

In Europe, more than 20 million women still do not have guaranteed access to safe abortion. This reality puts their physical health at risk and imposes disproportionate economic and emotional burdens, especially on those who are already in vulnerable situations.

It is in this context that the European citizens’ initiative “My Voice, My Choice” has emerged—a movement seeking to transform access to abortion in the European Union (EU). We spoke with Clara, a senior lawyer at Women’s Link, to understand what this initiative proposes, what progress it has made so far, and what its limitations are.

Continued: https://womenslinkworldwide.org/en/progress-and-limitations-of-the-my-voice-my-choice-initiative-an-interview-with-clara-serra-baiget/

02.04.2026

Interviews/Podcasts

Clara Serra Baiget

European Citizens’ Initiatives

European Union

My Voice My Choice campaign

Women's Link Worldwide

Europe

Activism

Human Rights

Could a registry of doctors who refuse abortions improve access in Spain?

By Léa Marchal, Brussels
13 March 2026
Podcast – 6 minutes, with transcript

In Spain, abortion is back in the political and legal spotlight.

A court ruling has just ordered the city of Madrid to create a registry of conscientious objectors. These are doctors in the region who refuse to perform abortion procedures.

Continued: https://euobserver.com/206829/listen-could-a-registry-of-doctors-who-refuse-abortions-improve-access-in-spain/

13.03.2026