Time for public to have say on IVF Bill
Jail sentences and €70,000 fines for breaching IVF rules
Independent body will enforce the law
Malta’s first IVF law was launched for public consultation yesterday, regulating the therapy and explicitly banning embryo freezing in all but the most exceptional cases.
The law promises to make IVF free to would-be parents, provided they are heterosexual and either married or in a “steady relationship”.
Doctors performing the procedure will be allowed to fertilise a maximum of two eggs at a time, with any other eggs produced frozen through the process of oocyte vitrification, that is, freezing a woman’s eggs.
If a woman fails to conceive through either of the two fertilised eggs, she will be able to repeat the IVF process using excess eggs frozen from her first treatment, sparing her from having to repeat painful hyperstimulation therapy.
The two-egg limit, which Health Minister Joe Cassar said was now feasible due to “advances in medical technology”,
allows the government to sidestep the thorny issue of what to do when the fertilisation process results in multiple embryos being created.
An independent regulatory body, the Authority for Embryo Protection, will be charged with implementing and managing the law.
Among other things, the authority will issue licences to IVF-certified clinics and vet prospective parents to ensure they meet eligibility criteria, including deciding whether an unmarried couple is in a “stable relationship”.
The authority’s greatest discretionary power will be in establishing when an embryo should be frozen and subsequently matching such embryos for adoption.
Embryo freezing is prohibited except in what the draft law terms as “force majeure” cases, such as the prospective mother passing away after egg fertilisation but before the embryo is implanted, for example.
Deciding what constitutes such a “force majeure” case will be up to the five-person authority, which is likely to be made up of medical and bioethical experts.
Prospective parents will be vetted by the authority and must have exhausted all other conception methods before being allowed to undergo the procedure.
Medical practitioners who object to IVF on moral grounds will be allowed to exempt themselves from taking part in IVF-related procedures.
Years in the making, the draft law was presented just 24 hours after the Maltese bishops issued a pastoral letter decrying IVF as morally wrong and “a threat to human life”.
Justice Minister Chris Said explained the three key principles underpinning the draft Bill. The cardinal principle, he emphasised, was to safeguard human life from the moment of conception.
“The Bill makes it clear that fertilisation can only take place for the sake of pregnancy. Absolutely no other reason, be it research-related or otherwise, is permissible,” Dr Said stressed.
It would also give couples unable to conceive through natural means the possibility of having a baby as well as regulating a sector that had hitherto been operating in a regulatory vacuum, he added.
Those caught breaching the law faced hefty fines (of up €70,000) as well as prison sentences of up to seven years, Dr Said explained.
Dr Cassar said free IVF entitlement criteria would be established by the Health Department in collaboration with the yet-to-be-established regulatory authority, in line with internationally recognised guidelines.
Jargon explained
Assisted reproductive technology: The umbrella term for artificial methods used to achieve pregnancy. IVF is one, but not the only, form of ART.
In-vitro fertilisation: The process by which an egg is fertilised by a sperm outside the body. Once extracted, the egg is fertilised with a sperm. If successful, the result is a zygote – the earliest stage of an embryo.
Embryo: The first multi-cellular building block leading to birth. In humans, it is called an embryo for about eight weeks. After that, the embryo becomes a foetus.
Oocyte vitrification: The process of freezing a woman’s eggs. It supersedes previous freezing techniques by reducing the number of ice crystals that form on frozen eggs. Ice can destroy the egg’s cell structure. It is, however, relatively unproven, having only emerged as a viable medical technique over the past few years.
Ovarian hyperstimulation: The first step in the IVF process. An intensive course of fertility medications is used to stimulate egg production, resulting in more eggs than usual being produced.
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11 Comments
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Gerry Cowie
Jul 29th 2012, 00:55
Patrick Zammit - why should those who value human life be forced to take part in treatment which they consider to be morally wrong? From what you are saying it would appear that you would like to see them forced to take part!
In the UK there have in the past been people sacked for refusing to take part in abortions as they see abortion as, quite rightly, taking a human life. It would set a wrong precedent to force people to do things which they find morally repugnant. Your comparison to other situations is disingenuous and very wide of the mark!
Luke Lanzon seems determined to split hairs over the embryo issue. What is Luke's personal agenda here? I should like to know! An eary stage human being is human. People who prevent it from becoming a full term child find it very convenient to say otherwise. So, to educate Luke yet again, an embryo is a human being at its earliest stage with potential. Surely Luke is not telling us all that he considers that he was nothing and valueless before his birth! Surely he is not telling us that his own dear parents thought their own son was a nothing because of the stage at which he had reached in the womb! Luke, try as you might, you will not change my mind and I suspect I shall not change yours! But if you are going to treat the early stage of human life as being of no value, then you may include only yourself in that opinion, and certainly not me or anybody else who has respect for human life from conception.
Ramon Cashs, as a self-confessed humanist, do you not in fact support the human race? You described this legislation as "a comedy of errors" when in fact the only errors are your own. Why are you so opposed to the protection of human embryos? After all you were one once? Are you saying that you do not value yourself?
Patrick Zammit
Jul 29th 2012, 09:45
Gerry
My comparison is not off the mark. Here we are introducing the risky notion that a secular society has to bow its head to the whims of religious extremists.
Presuming you live in the UK you must be aware of (but conveniently ignore) cases like the closing of swimming pools on certain days to accommodate Muslim females. Or where schools in the UK are being allowed to include in their syllabus ideas that are unsupported by any evidence whatsoever whilst excluding items which are evidence based. Sharia law is creeping in thanks mainly to accommodating politicians like Tony Bliar whose career depends on the votes of again, religious fanatics.
This is a slippery path which will see more of the following:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/9162051/Woman-died-after-Muslim-nurse-refused-to-help-as-he-was-praying.html
David Seychell
Jul 28th 2012, 17:43
"The law promises to make IVF free to would-be parents, provided they are heterosexual and either married or in a “steady relationship”."
And how would one determine if a person is a heterosexual or not? Why discriminate based on sexual orientation? What if a married couple, man plus woman are both homosexuals? And how come the LGBT community did not say anything yet, when usually they are so vociferous?
I think that discrimination based on sexual orientation is clearly a bad idea here. It would be better if free and public funded IVF would be provided only to married couples independent of their sexual orientation.
Patrick Zammit
Jul 28th 2012, 11:35
"Medical practitioners who object to IVF on moral grounds will be allowed to exempt themselves from taking part in IVF-related procedures."
The Government should rethink this.
Will we allow judges/magistrates not to divorce couples on moral grounds and registrars not to register a divorce?
Will we also allow Christians not to report for work on a Sunday?
Will we also allow Muslim waiters not to serve pork or alcohol?
This can create a nasty precedent which unions may choose to make use of.
Luke Lanzon
Jul 28th 2012, 11:13
"Embryo: The first multi-cellular building block leading to birth. In humans, it is called an embryo for about eight weeks. After that, the embryo becomes a foetus."
Gerry Cowie should read this, as you can see it is a multi cellular building block like I said yesterday a potential human being.
Ramon Casha
Jul 28th 2012, 10:54
So there's going to be a 5+ person ministerial committee with the authority to determine who may or may not procreate, if these require any kind of medical assistance. I wonder what criteria they will use. Maybe they will decide that the couple have to be earning a certain combined income, or will check the adeguacy of their house. Perhaps their religious affiliation, or whether they're from a posh area or a block of government apartments. Sounds like a chapter from a dystopian novel.
There is no justifiable reason for there to be any restrictions that are not not normally faced by any other couple who are procreating the natural way.
Charles Grixti
Jul 29th 2012, 14:50
Maybe it would be a good idea to extend this to every couple or person and a special licence be required to procreate. After all, the indiscriminate breeding of humans willy-nilly has had a lot of dire consequences, from child abuse and abandonment, to the deterioration of the enviroment through pollution and destruction of nature, exploitations of the poor by the rich, poverty and wars.
Gerry Cowie
Jul 28th 2012, 10:40
At the end of the day regulation is better than no regulation. As long as the unborn human is protected and valued at each and every stage, and there are no abuses then this may be the best we can hope for. Let us hope that Malta leads the world in its profound respect for human life from conception until natural death!
Charles Grixti
Jul 29th 2012, 14:44
Human life is defininetly not protected after birth. So why not campaign for that too instead of being stuck in the unborn groove? And as far as your Church goes, it has been directly responsible for millions of deaths of human beings throughout the centuries. How about that? Isn't this campaign for the unborn kind of hypocritical from the followers of a religion that burned heretics at the stake, assisted in the genocide of Amerindians in South America and has condoned and protected its clergy in the systematic abuse of children in Church homes and parishes, its irresponsible condemnation of condom use and the spread of AID's in Africa and not to mention its stance on anti-semitism, which lead Adolph Hitler to remark that he was only following Church's teachings in the persecution of European Jews.
Alex Falzon
Jul 28th 2012, 09:55
This move should be blocked because its too late....
Alex Falzon
Jul 28th 2012, 09:46
This move should be blocked.... NO IVF INTRODUCTION
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