Moviment Graffitti: Access to morning-after pill ‘a fight for equality’

Moviment Graffitti fully supports the campaign to license the morning-after pill in Malta, which it said will lead to more women being able to have further autonomy over their bodies and exercise their reproductive rights in a way they deem fit, “as opposed to having their reproductive organs policed by the government and religious pressure groups.”

On Friday, 102 women and the Women’s Rights Organisation filed a judicial protest against the ban of emergency contraception, arguing that it breached their fundamental rights as women.

The women, spearheaded by human rights lawyer and women’s rights campaigner Lara Dimitrijevic, are demanding licensing, importation and distribution of emergency contraception in Malta.

Pro-life organisation Gift of Life and a number of splinter groups came out strongly against the proposal, claiming that it was an attempt to legalise abortion.

In a statement issued on Saturday, Moviment Graffitti said the right of women to use emergency contraception in other countries is taken as a given.

“However, in Malta, the crusade against the autonomy of the woman, her right to her body and her right to govern over her own life continues to place women in precarious situations. It undermines their ability to live in the liberty they are entitled to, free from the subjugated position placed upon them by the expectations of a patriarchal society, obsessed with control over a woman's body,” the left-wing movement said.

Moviment Graffitti expressed its full solidarity with the various campaigners and activists fighting against “the interference in a woman's personal affairs.”

“Above all, this is a fight for equality and a belief that a woman is not to be suppressed by laws and policies enforced upon her by those who will likely never be in her position,” the group added.