When Andrea Prudente was sitting in a Maltese hospital waiting for her foetus’s heart to stop beating, she was offered grief counselling. Prudente, an American photographer, began to miscarry her pregnancy at 16 weeks during a holiday with her partner on the Mediterranean island, and had been told there was no hope for it.
But because of the heartbeat – and despite Prudente’s own life-threatening risk of haemorrhage and infection – doctors at the Mater Dei hospital in Msida would not intervene to end her very wanted pregnancy. Malta’s ban on abortion in all circumstances – the only EU country to do so – prevented it.
