If you can beat them, join them

Given its credentials as a movement of 'progressives, moderates and liberals', the Labour Party's decision to support a highly conservative Embryo Protection Bill can only raise questions about the state of our country's political health.

Admittedly, the issue itself is too complex to delve into here in detail. The proposed law had originally set out to regulate a very specific medical procedure, which is controversial because it involves an apparent 'interference' with the very first phases of a human life.

For this reason, public discussion has (understandably enough) tended to approach the issue primarily from a moral perspective. But when Parliament discusses issues like these, it does so with a view to regulate it at law. Its approach cannot be so unilateral; especially when dealing with a medical concern that affects people in the most immediate and direct way possible.

It was therefore disheartening to watch both sides of the House attaching so little weight to medical considerations during the debate, when compared to the enormous emphasis placed on purely theological ones. Indeed, initial discussions were unable to reach any conclusions at all on the most contentious aspects of the proposed law: including the maximum number of fertilised eggs to be transferred, and whether or not to permit the freezing of embryos.

These unanswered questions were relayed to a second select committee; which eventually recommended a maximum limit of two transferable eggs, and that embryo freezing be permitted. Its chairman, Dr Jean Pierre Farrugia, added: "Freezing would... allow women to go through less cycles of stimulation [and] also reduce mortality and morbidity caused to the woman by hormone stimulating therapy."

Nonetheless, the resulting bill went on to ignore this recommendation, and ruled out freezing altogether. In so doing, it has made it all but inevitable that the number of transferable eggs would have to be raised... and with it, the health risks to the patient. In fact the bill has already been amended, in order to increase the limit to three in certain cases.

In view of the obvious sensitivity of this delicate matter, one would have expected that the prospective parents would be given at least as much weight during the debate as the fertilised ovum. Instead, both government and opposition seemed uniquely concerned with allaying the fears and objections of a single vociferous lobby group, to the exclusion of all other considerations.

This very point was underscored recently by Dr Josie Muscat - the only medical profession to offer the service in Malta - who reacted to the bill with the stark verdict: "They are trying to please everybody. Except patients."

This is one of the reasons why the Embryo Protection Act has been widely criticised as 'overtly conservative' - a label that might not be particularly pejorative in itself; but which one does not exactly associate with a party claiming to tout 'moderate, liberal and progressive' credentials.

Ultimately there are very good reasons why any such movement would object to a law that - no matter how well-intentioned - increases health risks to pregnant women. By the same token, one would also expect a very thorough explanation as to why the same movement would instead agree with the government on all these points.

But as usual, the explanation seems to have less to do with IVF and all its associated medical concerns, than with the particular political circumstances of the Labour Party at the moment... and more cogently, the circumstances of the government it is trying to unseat.

Looking at the same issue through a political lens, the picture is suddenly very different. As long as the Labour Party could bank on rebel government MPs to regularly vote against their party line, it made political sense to test government's majority at every opportunity - as Labour has spent much of the past year doing.

But with government's rebels now apparently supporting the IVF bill, the Opposition seems to have suddenly lost its appetite for opposing.

And herein lies the problem. Just as the IVF law seems to have overlooked the existence of patients, the Labour Party seems to have forgotten the existence of the people it claims to represent: i.e., the liberals, moderates and progressives.

Not unreasonably, these expected 'their' movement to also represent their views in parliament. Surely they must have been disappointed, to see the Labour Party in full agreement with the Nationalist Party's conservative stand on such a polemical issue.

One has to question this matter from its narrow political perspective, too. The Labour Party has been reluctant to show its hand when it comes to party policies; and this is understandable, if not exactly commendable. But it is simply beggars belief that the same Labour Party would also risk tarnishing its liberal and progressive credentials so soon before an election, when the only visible policy difference between the two parties is precisely their approach to liberal issues.

This would be a mystery even were the two parties neck and neck. But polls currently place the Labour Party so far ahead, that the stance is utterly incomprehensible. One is forcefully reminded of the old saying: 'If you can't beat them, join them'.

Only Labour seems to be joining its opponents even when it can easily beat them.