Midsummer was never a good time for kite flying. Windy May was always a better month. But that was in my boyhood days when kite flying was just a simple but enjoyable pastime. Today, the reduction of political communication to spin has changed kite flying into an art practised without kites or flying. It is just a way of unofficially announcing a policy before formally announcing it.
This year’s midsummer or the Santa Marija weekend was chosen by the government’s spin doctors to break news and fly kites. The news of the €360 bank guarantee to Electrogas was made public through selective press briefings just when people were packing their bags for a few days by the sea.
And while most were still sunbathing and frolicking there, the Nisa Laburisti were directed by head office to do a little bit of kite flying on a subject of great importance. The period was probably chosen because the stupor that most people languish in could tend to soften reactions or make palatable what is sour.
Usually kite flying is made to gauge reactions. Kite flying during a time when reactions will definitively be muted is evidence of a done deal. Then the lack of reaction could be interpreted as a ‘sign’ of approval. Therefore, public reaction is essential and those who did not notice should wake up to the fact that the kite flying of the Nisa Laburisti includes womb renting, freezing embryos and the wilful destruction of unwanted human beings.
The government had set up an inter-ministerial IVF review working committee to ‘listen’ (a cliché so over-spinned that it has now become nauseating) to what stakeholders have to say about the Embryo Protection Act, which is now purposely being described just as the IVF law.
The Nisa Laburisti made short shrift of the complex medical, legal and ethical implications involved in the process. They just published a 10-point press release where each point is treated in just one to three lines. The superficiality of the treatment betrays that this is certainly not a serious and studied treatment of such an important subject. Perhaps they thought that one shouldn’t waste too much energy on done deals.
In line with the government’s dubbing of the Embryo Protection Act as the IVF law, the Nisa Laburisti also want this act’s title to be changed so that it directly refers to fertility treatment. Therefore, instead of an act respecting the dignity and rights of the embryo – as is in the case with the German legislation, for example, the Nisa Laburisti want to change the focus to fertility techniques. This in itself is already very significant.
One cannot not suspect that lurking behind the so-called consultative process there must be some covert agreement with some lobby
The sweeping aside of the reference to the embryo in the title is then carried to its logical conclusion. They do not consider the embryo to be an independent human being. For them he/she is just a piece of property owned by the parents which like a broken wardrobe can be disposed of with impunity. The statement is very clear on this point: “Following cycles, if embryos are not viable, the persons involved (couples, single) are to decide on their future.”
Hang on. Viable? Are the Nisa Laburisti now distinguishing between viable and non-viable human beings – at least at the embryonic stage? Do they also distinguish between viable and non-viable human beings towards the end of life? Their statement definitively says so.
They adopt a utilitarian approach to human life to be able to recommend its destruction by the owners, i.e. the parents. If parents can destroy an embryo fertilised and developed in the laboratory, is it not logical to assume they should also have the right to destroy a non-viable embryo fertilised and developed in the womb? Does not this attitude pave the way to abortion?
Is it just a coincidence that this slippery slope advocated by Nisa Laburisti came just a short time after the setting up of a Facebook page promoting abortion? They tell us that the law should make no legal restrictions on age but that such a restriction, if a restriction there should be, should be in the hands of civil servants, probably acting under the diktat of their political masters.
The Nisa Laburisti tell us we should start freezing embryos. Current Maltese legislation permits the freezing of ova. It allows the freezing of embryos in extremely exceptional circumstances, that is when the woman undergoing fertility treatment dies before implantation.
This system is working well for couples wanting a child through IVF, so much so that according to government statistics there is an overall success rate of 28 per cent, which compares well to the latest figure published by the UK Human Fertilization and Embryo Authority.
Wherever the freezing of embryos is permitted, extra frozen embryos are the natural result. Hundreds of thousands of such embryos are annually destroyed worldwide. Destruction of an embryo is a deliberate killing of an innocent human being. The position of Nisa Laburisti will logically lead to this killing.
As if all this is not enough, they are all for womb renting, which in politically correct language is called surrogacy. It is nothing but another facet of the tendency of neo-liberal capitalism to commoditise everything, including humans and their intimate relationships. Fortunately the reaction of Archbishop Charles Scicluna was rapid. In a tweet he said:
“We respect a woman’s womb as quasi sacred. Let us not turn it into another commodity whether for free or for money.”
Womb renting should be opposed by all those who have at heart the dignity of the human person. It is ironical that the debasing of human dignity is perversely considered by some as something progressive.
In their superficial statement the Nisa Laburisti never referred to the embryo’s rights. He/she is just a piece of property. They never tackle any of the serious issues involved. They throw overboard the balance the present law has between the rights of the prospective child and the parents’ wishes. One cannot not suspect that lurking behind the so-called consultative process there must be some covert agreement with some lobby or other bent on legalising surrogacy even in a roundabout way. All in due time.
joseph.borg@um.edu.mt