Assisted procreation report presented to House

The report on assisted procreation which the Social Affairs Committee presented to the House of Representatives did not dictate a position but should provide politicians and legislators with minimal information on ethical and moral issues to be considered in the future drafting of legislation on assisted procreation, including IVF.

Committee chairman Edwin Vassallo (PN) told the House that the report did not aim to be dogmatic but provided considerations that were made not only in the church document Dignitatis Personae but also in the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights and the Convention on Human Rights and Biomedicine.

This third report on the issue considered assisted procreation and bioethics and was a sequel to the report which the same committee, then chaired by Clyde Puli (PN), had prepared during the last legislature. Mr Vassallo stated that while the previous report considered assisted procreation predominantly from a medical perspective, the latest report considered assisted procreation from the perspective of ethics and morality.

In preparing its report the committee had been addressed by Prof. Rev. Emmanuel Agius, who presented information on the doctrine of the Catholic Church and compared the position taken in Dignitatis Personae with the contents of the Puli report.

In its debate the committee had considered what positions on assisted procreation would be contrary to human dignity and recommended that any future law was to ensure protection of the integrity and inviolability of human life from the first moment of inception, irrespective of the family status in which such human life was conceived. Mr Vassallo also invited politicians and legislators to consider assisted procreation on the basis of reason and not utility or emotions. Legislation would need to clearly define what was to be considered a “stable relationship” as it was within this structure that human life was to be conceived. This was to be defined irrespective of whether or not legislation on divorce or cohabitation was introduced.

The report recommended that the legislator clearly define who would be eligible for assisted procreation services, including eligibility for IVF.

The legislator must also consider the perspective proposed by Prof. Rev. Agius that the freezing of embryos was contrary to human dignity, and that third-party donations, in the case where one of the parents was sterile, was not to be considered on the same level as organ donation, because there was an ethical and moral responsibility of the donor in renouncing to that life being conceived which genetically belonged to him.