Government MP ruffles pro-lifers’ feathers

Jean-Pierre Farrugia has become the second government MP to donate the increase in his salary to a cause close to his heart but his move has ruffled the feathers of the Gift of Life foundation.

Dr Farrugia donated part of his increased honorarium to the Stefano Borgonovo Foundation for research on amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, a condition his wife suffers from. Mr Borgonovo is an Italian football player who also has the condition, a fatal and neurodegenerative disease.

Dr Farrugia, president of the House Committee on Assisted Procreation, also promised to set up a fund to help couples make use of frozen embryos for biological or adoptive mothers once a law on IVF was enacted.

This is what Gift of Life strongly objected to and yesterday said his comments were an admission the recent parliamentary recommendations to allow regular freezing of human embryos as part of IVF treatment would result in “unavoidable stockpiles of unwanted human embryos”.

Dr Farrugia had vigorously defended the position that the adoption mechanism proposed by the committee for stored frozen embryos would somehow resolve the problem in its entirety, Gift of Life said. However, he was now suggesting couples should be incentivised through fiscal measures to have the stored frozen embryos implanted or adopted.

“Once the absolute respect, value and dignity of human life from conception are lost, it is only a matter of time before other equally disturbing ideas are considered as society degrades morally. Incentivising women to implant frozen embryos, whether through private or public funds, is ethically wrong on numerous levels,” the foundation said.

But Dr Farrugia said if Gift of Life were pro-life they would be happy to see incentives encouraging frozen embryos to be taken up while ensuring women were not implanted with too many embryos at the same time.

He said the prevailing situation, where freezing was not allowed and all embryos were implanted, was causing more child fatalities and deformities and reducing the chances of successful pregnancies.

In a recent case, a set of triplets died, two during pregnancy and one a day after a 24-week delivery, he said.

His fund, he said, would help unsuccessful couples, and successful ones who could afford to have more children, to implant their frozen embryos, ensuring they did not go to waste. It could also help adoptive parents.

Accusing Gift of Life of being paradoxical, he said: “You are either pro-life or you are not. Our demographics are changing and increasing fertility is important. And since IVF is already practised, we should find the best ways of making it work.”

Dr Farrugia said the increased honorarium was officially announced to MPs last Friday and would be backdated to May 12, 2008. Instead of receiving 50 per cent of the civil service’s pay scale one, MPs will now be given 70 per cent and will receive their first rise this month with arrears to follow.

He said despite the difficult circumstances of his family, he did not feel comfortable taking a substantial, unexpected rise when the country could not afford to give a €1 rise in supplementary allowance to the most needy couples in the country. This was something he had objected to in the Budget debate.

Government MP Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando has already said he would be donating his rise to the pro-divorce movement, which he set up together with Labour MP Evarist Bartolo and others.

The Labour Party has set up a fund for MPs to donate their rise to help various charities.