Malta’s abortion taboo

The Europeans | European news, politics and culture

Katy Lee and Dominic Kraemer

Society & Culture, News

4.8 • 274 Ratings

🗓️ 27 January 2022

⏱️ 37 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

When the European parliament elected a new president last week, many of the headlines focused on one thing: the fact that she's against abortion. But Roberta Metsola's public stance is not at all unusual in a country with one of the strictest abortion bans in the world. This week we're asking: where does this incredibly strong taboo come from? Researcher and activist Liza Caruana-Finkel is here to fill us in. We're also talking about Chinese influence at European universities, and the case of a toilet that went all the way to Italy's Supreme Court. 'Why it is vital to decriminalise abortion: the case of Malta' - The Conversation China's Magic Weapon - BBC Excellent tweets about embarrassing mistakes in a second (or third or fourth) language This week's Isolation Inspiration: The Investigation (Efterforskningen); Atlas Linguae This episode was produced as part of Sphera, a collective of independent European media. Find out more at sphera-hub.com. Thanks for listening! If you enjoy our podcast and would like to help us keep making it, we'd love it if you'd consider chipping in a few euros / dollars / pounds a month at patreon.com/europeanspodcast. You can also help new listeners find the show by leaving us a review or giving us five stars on Spotify. Producers: Katy Lee and Wojciech Oleksiak Music: Jim Barne and Mariska Martina This podcast is part of the Are We Europe family. Find more like-minded European podcasts at areweeurope.com/audio-family. Twitter | Instagram | Facebook | hello@europeanspodcast.com

Transcript

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0:00.0	This podcast is a part of Sphira.
0:01.8	A collective of independent media outlets from across Europe.
0:05.7	For more information, visit Svira-hub.com. So Katie, last night, I finally did that thing, that most European thing that I've been wanting to do
0:39.2	for years.
0:40.5	I boarded a train on the other side of the continent and woke up as if by magic this morning
0:46.4	in my hometown of Amsterdam.
0:48.8	Oh, fun.
0:49.9	Wait, was it fun?
0:51.4	Well, kind of.
0:53.3	It's amazing.
0:54.4	And I've been watching as people on European Twitter talk about their wonderful night train journeys across the continent for a long time now and finally did it.
1:04.7	But I think because I was so excited about it, I didn't think about quite how uncomfortable it is.
1:09.6	Very cramped.
1:11.1	Yeah, I was at a a cushette with three people.
1:13.8	So that's three bunks on top of each other.
1:16.5	And there's not any room to stand or sit.
1:20.7	Top bunk is the worst. You have to have your neck at a right angle.
1:23.6	It was challenging. But I did get to sleep.
1:26.3	And I realized I'm just a bit like a baby. Like when the transport is moving, when I'm being rocked, then I do actually sleep. How lovely. I highly recommend it even if it's really uncomfortable.
1:37.3	And there is just something very romantic about it, isn't there? Although as you say, in install of the execution, I feel like the Europeans are
1:44.7	light years behind Asia in terms of making it actually feel glam and fun. I took a Thai night train
1:51.0	once and they were like little pockets for all of your stuff and everything was like really crisp
	...

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