Assisted procreation "should only be available to married couples"

Assisted procreation should be regulated by a law and should only be available to married couples, Andre Camilleri, a member of the Family Commission, has told a parliamentary committee.

Giving a presentation to the Social Affairs Committee, which is discussing biotechnology, Dr Camilleri said there was no doubt that there was an urgent need for legislation on assisted procreation.

Parliament, he said, should determine up to what stage action should be taken. Whenever there are doubts, decisions should always be taken in favour of life.

The proposed law, Dr Camilleri said, should establish that procreation action should only be accessible to married couples. It should not permit practices such as sperm or ova donations or surrogate motherhood.

The law should be an enabling one establishing clear guidelines and principles. It should set up a regulatory body and the legislative detail should be established by legal notices. It should also state the number of embryos which could be implanted in a woman.

Organisations providing procreation services should be licensed.

Dr Camilleri said that the commission had embarked on a number of studies which were confirming certain tendencies which required an explanation.

One such tendency was that couples were postponing starting a family, increasing the risk of infertility. Another was that many children were being born to unmarried mothers - 700 out of 2,500 births last year.

What was leading young couples to opt for an arrangement which was not marriage?

He said that family research should be formalised in a research institute which fell under the university. A brief for this institute had already been approved by several ministers but the institute had not yet been set up for financial reasons. He hoped it would be set up soon.

Replying to a question by Nationalist MP Michael Gonzi as to why he would limit the availability of assisted procreation to married couples, Dr Camilleri said that Parliament had not yet placed cohabitation and married couples on the same level, and therefore if it legislated on procreation, it should opt for the stability which was recognised by the state.

Committee chairman Clyde Puli (PN) pointed out that a married couple did not necessarily mean responsible parents, so why were other couples being excluded?

Dr Camilleri said that if assisted procreation was to be available to all stable couples, what would there be to stop such assistance to gay couples?

Ms Doreen Micallef from the National Council of Women referred to surrogate motherhood and asked how a woman could carry a baby in her womb for nine months and not have any feelings for it.

She also asked if a sperm donor would have the right to raise the child in the case of a mother who would have received his donated sperm but died after giving birth.

The development of a foetus, she said, was a continuous process which could only be stopped by abortion, miscarriage or the freezing of the embryo. There was no moral reason which justified stopping life, she stressed.

She asked what was meant by letting a frozen embryo die a natural death. How can such a death be natural if the embryo was not given the chance to live?

On pre-implantation genetic testing, if an embryo was imperfect, should it not have the right to live, she asked?

Another presentation was given by Tony Mifsud from the Unborn Child Movement.

Mr Mifsud said that the movement was in the process of drawing up a charter aimed at safeguarding the unborn child.

Children needed protection from before they were born, he stressed, because in cases where the mother smoked, drank alcohol, took drugs or inhaled toxic substances during pregnancy, the child could be born with mental and physical difficulties.