Assisted procreation committee to focus on three issues

The new parliamentary committee set up to discuss legislation on assisted procreation will only discuss three issues – the eligibility of couples for treatment, the freezing of embryos and sperm and egg donations.

Committee chairman Jean Pierre Farrugia said the brief was limited because the issues linked to in vitro fertilisation had already been extensively debated in 2005 by the parliamentary social affairs committee under the chairmanship of Clyde Puli.

“We have no intention of replicating all the good work undertaken by Clyde Puli and others. However, no agreement was ever reached on the three contentious issues over which even expert opinion is divided,” Dr Farrugia said.

On Thursday, Parliament was presented with yet another report on assisted procreation, compiled by the social affairs committee under the chairmanship of Edwin Vassallo. This second report deals purely with the ethical considerations of IVF.

Dr Farrugia declined to express his personal views on the three outstanding issues insisting he did not want to pre-judge the committee’s work. The committee has three months to draw up a report on its conclusions.

It has to determine whether IVF would only be made available to married couples or extended to cohabiting couples. More contentious would be the decision whether to allow embryos to be frozen for future use and the donation of sperm and egg (gametes) in cases where either of the partners is not able to conceive.

Apart from Dr Farrugia, the committee is to have two other members from opposite sides of the House, who still have to be appointed.

Earlier this year the Social Policy Ministry entrusted the Bioethics Consultative Committee to draft a Bill on assisted procreation. The Bill was meant to have been drawn up by summer but no draft ever made it to Cabinet.

In an in-depth report on the use of biotechnology, genetic technology and assisted fertilisation, penned by Mr Puli four years ago, the parliamentary social affairs committee proposed a law giving the embryo a moral and legal status by not later than the phase of conception, which is when the two nuclei of the sperm and the egg fuse to form the single cell of human life.

The committee had recommended that IVF be offered to married heterosexual couples or those in a stable relationship. It had also accepted Polar Body Biopsy, which are tests on the DNA from the ovum in case of serious diseases.

The committee had published the report following an eight-month discussion that was touched by controversy when former Children’s Commissioner Sonia Camilleri argued that people should not have the right to have a child at all costs. She had also said IVF should be banned because research could not yet guarantee a healthy life for children born through the process.

Furthermore, earlier this year The Sunday Times revealed that Mater Dei Hospital had laboratories equipped to handle IVF but these were not being used because no law had been enacted to regulate the process.