I am going to avoid being sensational. We’ve had enough of that. I want to concentrate on our run-of-the-mill situation, wherein a heterosexual couple come to me asking for help after several years of trying to conceive to no avail.

And sorry to upset our conservative lobby, but I don’t tell them to just lump it. I don’t tell them that nature does not mean for them to complete their family.

For in the same way that medicine does not tell those with a heart problem or cancer patients to just lump it, it has gone a long way to help these patients, too. The European Charter of Human Rights states that everyone has a right to health, and infertility is listed as a health issue, too.

So if any of my medical colleagues ever consider going down this route with such patients, let me remind them that they are breaching this very concept.

Similarly, in the very same way that all specialists in medicine have an obligation to remain up to date in their area of expertise, to be able to offer the best possible care to their patients, we who work in infertility are no different.

The Embryo Protection Act subjects the mother to unnecessary, repeated interventions and compels us to transfer embryos into a womb that is likely to reject them

So how am I expected to renounce this obligation towards my patients?

The Embryo Protection Act: what a farce! It protects no one, neither the mother nor the embryo.

It subjects the mother to unnecessary, repeated interventions and compels us to transfer embryos into a womb that is likely to reject them. And this when everywhere else in the world, they freeze such embryos, thus pushing up their rates of success to above 60 per cent. And please remember that success translates to both the mother and the offspring.

So how can anyone still expect me not to push wholeheartedly for reforms? I actually would like a lot more. I believe our patients deserve the whole lot that is offered in the rest of Europe. My patients are not second-class citizens. I should not find myself in a position that I have to repeatedly tell them to do IVF locally only if they can’t afford to go abroad.

And all this why? Yes, it’s time to call a spade a spade. All the vociferous anti-IVF-reform campaigners have one thing in common. They have staunch extreme Catholic beliefs. And I accept and respect that. No one is going to impose on these people to do anything against their will, but nor can they expect to impose their beliefs on the rest of the Maltese citizenry.

They cannot expect the State to legislate in accordance with the most conservative Catholic rules.

Maltese law does not imprison those who have sex outside marriage and who use contraception. And Maltese law has gone against Catholic teaching in legislating in favour of homosexuals, the morning-after pill and divorce.

And rightly so, as the State has the obligation to legislate with the good of all its citizens in mind. I can now hear the same fanatical lobbies echoing in the background that this is paving the way for abortion. What rubbish. This is pro-life.

Their arguments are akin to abortion, not ours. Yes, for all those children who are now embraced by their families thanks to IVF would have never been born if it were up to them. Their actions are tantamount to abortion by omission. The result is the same. Fewer children born.

Their argument surrounds the concept that the human being starts at fertilisation, at the union of the sperm with the egg. This concept is exclusive to the Catholic faith. The Muslims believe this happens at 40 days and the Jews when the organs form.

And I’m not even mentioning science.

Eight cells in the laboratory is not a human being. It has the potential to become one using very extraordinary measures. The potential “to be” is not equivalent to “being”.

I would have loved to be acclaimed as the pioneer Maltese to have put forward these beliefs. But alas, I’m not. Fr Peter Serracino Inglott expressed these views in no uncertain terms, claiming he did not equate the early embryo to a human being and had no qualms with embryo freezing.

My appeal is that we encourage our parliamentarians to legislate for the good of our infertile population, embracing the undisputed principle that they are there to legislate with the good of each and every citizen in mind, even when this might go against their own very personal beliefs.

This is their duty.

Mark Sant is an obstetrician and gynaecologist and a consultant at the Assisted Reproductive Technology Clinic at Mater Dei.

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