Church’s views on embryo freezing shouldn’t be ignored (1)

A reader of your report ‘Freezing embryos is in itself ‘not wrong’’ (The Sunday Times, March 6), especially of the highlighted sentence “The government should not be looking at the Church’s stand” – Fr Peter”, enquired with a certain amount of solicitude whether I was suffering from incipient dementia.

So I feel duty bound to clarify that, whatever the Maltese expression I may have used, I certainly did not mean that the legislator should simply ignore the views of any stakeholder, least of all the Church.

In fact, immediately after the seminar I agreed with my highly esteemed friend, Miriam Sciberras, promoter of the anti-freezing of embryos group, that it would have been appropriate for AZAD to invite on the panel an official exponent of the Church’s position on the matter. (Both I and my colleague Rev. Emanuel Agius chose to speak only from a philosophical point of view).

The issue was whether the legislator should totally forbid the freezing of embryos under any circumstances (making it a criminal offence).

My point was that even if the Church authorities’ prudential judgment is to desist not only from freezing embryos but also from medically assisted procreation itself, it does not follow necessarily that the legislator should penalise the freezing.

I also want to add that I think the state should continue to penalise the killing of embryos.

Moreover, I fully acknowledge the rationale of those who want freezing to be legally forbidden in order to avoid the serious risk of embryos being unnecessarily killed, and also that preference be given to oocyte vitrification.

I do not agree with those who hold that freezing embryos is in itself a violation of the dignity of the human person. If it were, then presumably the use of cryology for therapeutic purposes, for instance, against peritoneal cancer, should also be punishable by law.