Right in the middle of summer, when people are least wont to think about complex scientific, social and political issues, Nisa Laburisti, the female wing of the Labour Party, drop a very well researched news bomb. They say that the IVF process in Malta should be reviewed after three years and that embryo freezing should be allowed in IVF procedures as should surrogacy. Surrogacy involves the renting of a third person's womb or uterus which is hired to have the child of a couple who are unwilling to go through child birth or are unable to have children. It has been known to happen that sometimes the sperm and ova do not even come from any of the three people involved but from another two couples who donate the sperm and the ova, so that we are looking at a five-person scenario at most or a three-person scenario, oh and the baby born from the procedure makes it six people unless they are twins, which in that case would make it seven or even more!
Let me start with the issue of embryo freezing. In Malta, the Embryo Protection Act only allows IVF with frozen ova used for fertilisation and only the insertion of two, very rarely three, embryos into the womb. This was purposely done so that there would not be any extra supernumerary embryos left after the procedure and no embryos were sacrificed during the freezing and thawing procedures so that the number of multiple pregnancies is kept to a minimum to avoid prenatal mortalities to the mother (Nisa Laburisti please note) and child. A few days previously to this statement by Nisa Laburisti, the Department of Health issued a statement that with these current procedures in place, the success rate of IVF in Malta surpasses the UK success rate for IVF. With these figures in hand, who in his right senses, pray, asks for the introduction of embryo freezing in the IVF process with its concomitant dangers to human life and serious ethical issues to boot? I can imagine that some IVF practitioners would be in favour of introducing frozen embryos, maybe some of those who, in the pre-regulated days, inserted more than two embryos in utero, many more than two in fact, and who would pine for the good old days where IVF success rates would have been close to 50 per cent. This to the chagrin of the responsible paediatricians and the medical and nursing staff of the special care paediatric units, where multiple pregnancy rates were higher than normal because of this procedure! The real objective IVF values, as all responsible obstetricians know, is between 25 per cent and 30 per cent. Let me quote the press release by the Malta Health Department issued on 30th July. "In the last 30 months, (January 2013 - June 2015), 411 in-vitro fertilisation (IVF) / intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) cycles have been carried out in Malta, 81 cycles of which have been carried out in the new IVF clinic in Mater Dei Hospital since starting its operations in January 2015, the government said in a statement today. In total, 116 viable pregnancies have resulted from these cycles - an overall success rate of 28 per cent which compares well to the latest figure published by the UK Human Fertilisation & Embryo Authority (HFEA) - 25 per cent in 2011." There you have it from the horse's mouth, even better than the UK values, a country not known for its lax medical practices, so where is the rationality in all this? There is no rationality; there is however, I have no doubt, a hidden agenda by someone not having the courage to come out with the proposal himself/herself.
Coming to the issue of surrogacy itself, this is not the first time the issue was raised by the PL. Way back in 2012 when Parliament was debating the then IVF Bill, they wanted it introduced quite strongly quoting some truly exceptional cases as cause (if I am not mistaken, Hon. Michael Farrugia and Hon. Owen Bonnici were among those who spoke on the subject in Parliament). Then suddenly the objections were dropped purportedly because the elections were round the corner and they did not wish to lose votes on this issue or spark off a controversy with the Church. Now it seems that it is back on the agenda with a vengeance. This renting of wombs is a sordid issue fraught with ethical dynamite. The rights of the children raised by their natural parents, the rights of the children to know who their genetic parents are as part of their human identity. Who is defending the rights of children here? There is the issue of commoditisation or commercialization of human beings, the bonding of the birth mother with the developing child in utero, often refusing to hand the child over after delivery, thereby causing profound emotional stress to the birth mother (Nisa Laburisti please note), and last but not least the issue of payments, to the surrogate and to the gamete donors, which payments are illegal according to the EU human Rights Convention (sale of human body parts), so payments are often passed underhandedly. The PL seems to be good at this underground business I perceive!
What really bothers me is that I am rather sure that Nisa Laburisti had better things to do this summer than come up with issues that are fraught with ethical hand grenades. Who is really behind this affair? Could it be that Minister Helena Dalli or her advisers are obsessed with the idea of transferring the rights of homosexual couples to be able to have children via third parties? What are these cases before the Strasbourg European Court of Human Rights that Nisa Laburisti are talking about? Can we have details? Is this a smokescreen to translate an equality of rights into a sort of equality of fact? One knows that democracy is built on equality of legal rights not those based on equality of fact, otherwise we would all want the Prime Minister's salary as of right! Does Prime Minister Joseph Muscat, who has publically declared that abortion was a no go area for the Labour Party, because there was public consensus against it, implicitly because of the destruction of innocent human life, now suddenly gets weak knees when faced with the destruction of multiples of human lives at particular levels of embryological development but nonetheless just as human? ("The Labour Party and this government are totally against any type of abortion. I categorically deny that the Labour Party or this government wants to introduce abortion," visit to Senglea - April 2014). Is it OK to talk against abortion but then go ahead by allowing the legal destruction of scientifically proven human lives, so couples can have children? Is this not a contradiction in terms?
I do not know who the president of Nisa Laburisti is, and we actually need to see some faces here, but I am willing to have a public debate with such a person or with any minister, parliamentarian or professional person involved in bringing up this new issue. Let us see whether they end up with either human blood on their hands, or the prima facie neglect of fundamental human and children's rights.
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