There is an uncanny resemblance between the intolerance and bigotry displayed by Għaqda Patrijotti Maltin (Organisation of Maltese Patriots) and the Malta Life Network, a newly formed “pro-life” lobby which has been set up to stop the law on In-Vitro Fertilisation (IVF) being extended to include embryo freezing.
The former is strenuously against any immigration into Malta on the grounds that “if illegal immigration is not halted we could become a Muslim state within 20 years” [since] “our religion is Catholicism”. Their naked racism and xenophobia are an embarrassment to any country calling itself Christian and civilised.
The latter’s zealotry takes a different form. It is convinced that “embryo freezing is equivalent to abortion”.
The “pro-life’s” unscientific musings are a short cut to thinking, as well as a sickening substitute for compassion for the suffering of infertile couples.
Both organisations are guilty of allowing their prejudices to rule their heads.
IVF is a life-affirming form of medical treatment which has been successfully used for almost 40 years. Sensibly regulated and within reasonable ethical constraints, it offers the miracle of life to previously infertile couples.
Malta’s legislation on IVF was enacted three years ago. It had been under consideration for several years by then Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi, who had prevaricated woefully over it. The Embryo Protection Act was passed in 2012, but IVF services were only introduced in the public health service in 2013.
Practical experience since then has shown that the assisted reproductive technology which the Embryo Protection Act allows is too restrictive. It sets strict limits on the fertilisation of eggs to two for each cycle and bans embryo freezing (vitrification) and sperm donation. The live birth rate of the current IVF treatment (oocyte vitrification, which is more complicated than freezing sperm and embryos) has resulted in only eight per cent of the 51 cycles completed in one year being successful. Consequently, the rate of completed pregnancies is clearly too low.
The government has established an inter-ministerial committee to examine access to embryo vitrification which, in contrast to the technology of slow freezing, is said to be a more efficient method for the preservation of embryos.
Vitrification provides a higher survival rate for embryos when they are thawed and this improves the clinical outcome of a successful pregnancy.
Ninety per cent of embryos can survive the process of vitrification.
But the possibility that this may be the way forward, leading to an amendment to the legislation now in place, has led to a hysterical reaction from a rag-bag of “pro-life” groups.
Moreover, it appears they are supported by Lawrence Gonzi (who, like the Bourbons, appears to have learnt nothing and forgotten nothing from the divorce debacle over which he presided).
Limiting the success rate of IVF could result in the destruction of even more human embryos than were ever frozen in the process
In a sweeping and irrational comment, Gonzi maintained that “If such a law passes, it will represent a conscious decision to end human life and will sow the seeds of abortion”. He and all those in the Malta Life Network seem wedded to the unreasonable belief that “freezing embryos is equivalent to the destruction of life”.
The assertion that any change to the present IVF law will be the start of a slippery slope leading ineluctably to the introduction of abortion in Malta is clearly just scaremongering. It is an argument that is beloved by all those bereft of objective facts to back up their assertions, designed to exert emotional pressure over those not familiar with the issues.
Abortion in Malta is a criminal offence. This country is most unlikely ever to introduce it simply because there is no call for it. Those women who want an abortion – perhaps 70 to 100 each year – get one by taking a flight to the United Kingdom or Italy and having it performed there. That has been the way for decades.
Unlike the introduction of divorce in Malta, for which there was patently a pent-up need and no remedy, abortion by those few who want it is already available.
Abortion is a very broad term whose strict meaning is the deliberate termination of any pregnancy under any circumstances, including natural miscarriage.
It is an issue that arouses great controversy between defenders of the mother’s right of choice and those holding that human life is sacred and begins at the moment of conception.
The “pro-life” lobby focuses narrowly on the termination of pregnancy by direct medical intervention but entirely disregards that spontaneous abortions occur in nature all the time. It also ignores the untold millions of newly fertilised ova that get aborted when couples try endlessly to have children without success. Thus, it is a fact that couples resorting to IVF would “abort” far more often without the assisted reproductive technology than with it.
Limiting the success rate of IVF – which those opposing the introduction of embryo vitrification would achieve – could therefore result in the destruction of even more human embryos than were ever frozen in the process. But such is the misguided and fanatical approach of the “pro-life” lobby that it now applies the word “abortion” to a brilliant medical technology that has as its overriding aim the creation of new life in cases where without such an intervention there could be none. The paradox of their position passes them by.
Instead of sticking to rational argument, the Malta Life Network resorts to misplaced, hysterical, emotive and inflammatory language. One writer to this newspaper seriously wrote of “a holocaust in the offing” since “legalising abortion will be the consequence of the proposed amendments” [to the law]. Another wrote of “the indefinite suspension of a new human life in an icy limbo”.
Malta Life Network deals in hyperbole and lays itself open, with justification, to the charge of fighting the advance of science with medieval superstition and “absurd moral fantasies that manifestly fly in the face of reality”. They are ostensibly “pro-life”, but at the same time they consciously seek by their objection to the introduction of the tried and tested technology of embryo freezing to deprive untold numbers of currently unviable infants of the chance of life.
It is a chance made possible because we are fortunate to live in an era of great advances in medical technology. To assist conception is not against nature. It is to help nature along. It ensures the joy of parenthood to infertile couples to whom nature has been unfair. Older and reliable technologies, such as embryo freezing, should not be ruled out, as they are under the current legislation.
IVF treatment must of course be sensibly regulated to ensure that within reasonable ethical constraints (the bio-ethics consultative committee is still to pronounce itself on this issue), women who are infertile may benefit fully from the best medical treatment available without the risk of abuse. In the final analysis, this is a matter which should be determined by people with scientific competence. The evidence of the latest scientific advances should lie at the heart of the new legislation.
There is no place for zealotry, bigotry or dogmatism when what is at stake is the well-being and the medical benefit of countless infertile women who could be helped through embryo vitrification to create a new life.
To borrow a phrase, Malta should be standing up for life by changing the current inadequate law.