Valletta, Malta, Oct 19, 2007 / 08:34 am
Rebecca Gomperts, the Dutch foundress and director of the organization Women on Waves, visited Malta this week to promote abortion. The mostly Catholic population denounced her presence, and the public events she was supposed to lead ended up taking place behind closed doors.
Women on Waves operates the so-called “Abortion Ship,” which takes women from countries where abortion is illegal into international waters to perform the procedure. According to Lifesitenews.com, Gomperts visited the Maltese capital “to deliver a lecture titled, ‘The Right to a Dignified Motherhood: The Crucial Abortion Issue.’ A Maltese correspondent with LifeSiteNews.com said that the visit was met with ‘an overwhelming opposing reception’.”
As the strongly pro-life Maltese protesters, organized by the Gift of Life Foundation, stood in a silent candle-light vigil outside, Gomperts spoke to invitation-only media at the Castille Hotel in Valetta last Wednesday. She told the media that her particular aim was promoting the RU-486 “abortion tablets” that she claimed are safer than giving birth.
“Many women do not know of the existence of medical [chemical] abortion and that's one of my goals in Malta, to make them aware that if they can obtain the medicine they can do it safely themselves in the first nine weeks,” she said. Gomperts claimed that “a small number” of Maltese women had contacted her privately to arrange abortions on her ship.