There is an air of unfortunate disbelief amongst those practicing Catholics who are infertile and the rapport they might have with the Magisterium of their Church, which seems unfair and uncaring about their plight. One need just read through Maltese newspaper columns or listen to news programmes to gauge public reaction to the Bishop’s pastoral letter on IVF which was, on the whole negative. There is a genuine feeling of hurt together with the frustration that questions why the Church should tell any couple what to do in these circumstances, since the desire to have children is so natural and strong.

Although language is indeed important, and attention must be paid to this medium when writing pastoral letters of this nature, it remains a fact that the universal Catholic Church as a whole is opposed to IVF treatment for infertility – which is now in the region of one in seven couples in developed countries. Obviously, the Church does not condemn the people brought into the world by these techniques, neither does it condemn the parents who may have to resort to these techniques, as it suffers with them the pain of childlessness. However, the Church remains concerned about the technique itself and how the parents have their children.

Sometimes, even with the best intentions of the parents, IVF techniques involve the death of the very same children the couple desire. During the last July meeting of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology, it was announced that since 1978, five million babies had been born through IVF and about 350,000 are brought into the world annually. Unfortunately, the unspoken numbers are also there! Only one in six embryos created after IVF will make it to birth!

In Britain, where the numbers may be more precise, the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority declared that for every child born of IVF, about 30 embryos were created. This means that for every couple conceiving a child through IVF, between five and thirty of their children died so that they could give birth to one. The number of embryos sacrificed is extremely high. On a worldwide scale, this means that between 30 and 150 million children have died because of IVF! Unfortunately, such a large loss of innocent human life is casually accepted and ignored by the IVF industry, particularly so where the freezing of embryos is allowed. Most physicians do not even recognise such fatalities and failures and simply accept it as a normal and standardised aspect of the procedure. No wonder the Church is so concerned!

In Malta, the IVF Bill tries to create a path in which professionals can work without the need to sacrifice any embryos used in the procedure. To the credit of the Maltese doctors who have practised the procedure for these last 20 years, they have avoided the freezing of embryos – which is the main culprit in the destruction of human lives – and have only worked with fresh embryos. Today, new techniques exist that avoid freezing embryos altogether and allow the freezing of eggs or so called oocytes. There are, of course, other attendant dangers which the proposed Bill is trying to address. I sincerely believe that it should be incumbent upon everyone concerned to cooperate with each other in order to produce the best law possible that will really respect human life entirely, especially the absolute right of innocent human life.