PD MP Marlene Farrugia this evening asked whether IVF services would be opened up to medical tourism.

Speaking during the debate on the proposed IVF amendments, which will introduce embryo freezing and surrogacy, Farrugia referred to the recently introduced Legal Notice which offers tax breaks to foreign IVF specialists.

She pointed out that IVF is currently offered in partnership between the government and the private sector, and asked what the terms of the contract were and whether the government would accept to publish it.  

She also asked whether the NCIPU – the intensive care unit for babies – was being strengthened and equipped to deal with an increase in demand, seeing that the unit was used by both the public and private healthcare systems.

Farrugia started off by referring to Monday’s incident, when fellow PD MP Godfrey Farrugia was thrown out of Parliament by Speaker Anglu Farrugia. She said no such thing happened when former PL MP Joe Debono Grech had threatened her. His actions did not only go unpunished but he was later given the Gieh ir-Repubblika.

Farrugia said on Monday there was an attempt to incite people against ‘us’, adding that she was the most attacked female in Malta after Daphne Caruana Galizia.

On the other hand, she said, the PD had set an example when it not only removed a disparaging remark against Parliamentary Secretary Julia Farrugia Portelli from its Facebook page but also issued an apology.

Referring to the Prime Minister’s earlier speech, Farrugia accused Muscat of “lying blatantly.”

He lied, she said, when he claimed that embryo freezing was introduced in 2012. That law only envisaged freezing in very extreme medical cases.

She said the PM wanted to pass the law as soon as possible so as to provide some “entertainment” while scandals were being uncovered.

Muscat had instructed his MPs to claim they were pro-life, she said. “But we all know that one out of every three embryos will die. Is that pro-life?”

“We are in favour of IVF, but IVF that does not destroy human life.”

 She also accused the government of setting a limit on the number of embryos that can be implanted – thus discriminating between who gets a chance and who gets frozen – for the sake of increasing the success rate. This was discrimination towards human life right from the start, Farrugia said.