Children's commissioner Pauline Miceli has articulated her approval towards the Embryo Protection Act amendments which have been proposed by the government and are currently being debated in parliament. The amendments have been the subject of controversy and protest since their announcement.

A press release from the office of the commissioner for children issued this afternoon highlighted the "chief rights at play in the context of the bill are the child's rights to life and health, identity and stable and loving care." The issue of surrogacy was not mentioned within the press release.

Given her political background, it is not a surprise that Miceli favours the government's position. efore being named commissioner, she had served as a local councillor in Naxxar after being elected on the Labour Party ticket.

Child's right to life and health

With regards to the child's right to life and health, Miceli said, "Cryo-preservation or freezing of human embryos has become a medically viable practice by virtue of the high rate of survival of cryo-preserved or frozen human embryos. The bill provides a framework for the cryo-preservation of embryos to be conducted in a way that maximises the chances of the individual human embryo to survive throughout the freezing and thawing process and thus to eventually develop healthily."

Child's right to individual identity

For the child's right to individual identity, Miceli said that when it comes to gamete donation "the bill safeguards the right of a child conceived through such means to his or her individual identity by giving children,  when they turn sixteen, the right to know the identity of the donor through whose gamete they were conceived. The fact that the bill proposes that gamete donation by the same donor can happen once only preserves the uniqueness of the child's biological identity. 

At the same time, the bill promotes and protects the principle that the child's primary identity lies in his or her relationship to his or her parent/s irrespective of the extent to which the child is biologically related to him/her/them.

Hence, both in terms of the child's right to know his or her biological identity and the child's right to be recognised unconditionally as part of the family unit which acted for the child to be conceived, born and raised, the bill puts children conceived through medically assisted reproductive techniques on a par with all other children, including adopted children.

Child's right to stable and loving care

With regards to the child's right to stable and loving care, the commissioner highlighted that the quality of the care of children is more of an important aspect than the status or gender of the prospective parents.

 "The proposed extension of eligibility for medically assisted procreation to single or same sex prospective parents is a natural consequence of the broader and more plural definition of family units which relatively recent legal and social developments have enshrined," she said. "Children's rights advocates are more concerned with the content and quality of the care children receive from their parents than with the parents' sexual orientation and marital status."

"The bill also provides for unclaimed frozen embryos to be released for adoption. Here we need to work hard to ensure that the quality and accessibility of the adoption process guarantees the right to receive loving care from a stable family unit, as is the case of any adopted child," she said.  

Last Sunday, thousands of people rallied for embryo protection in Valletta. Over the last few weeks, Indepth, the Malta Independent programm interviewed Miriam Sciberras, Chairperson of Life Network Malta and Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Health Chris Fearne regarding the amendments.

Sciberras explained that while regulating the law to help couples while also safeguarding the human embryo is a good thing, the amendments proposed are introducing new concepts which are not n principle part of Maltese society. Amongst others factors regarding IVF, Fearne announced that couples can decide to not have their third embryo frozen.