Minister met anti-abortionists twice to discuss IVF bill

The Gift of Life foundation is calling for an "urgent" amendment to the level of punishment proposed by the Embryo Protection Act, the bill that will regulate in vitro fertilisation

The anti-abortion lobby, which had campaigned unsuccessfully for the entrenchment of criminal penalties against abortion in the Constitution, said it had already resent its request to Chris Said to increase the penalties for breaches against the law, which bans embryo freezing.

The foundation has already met Said twice.

"In both meetings we expressed our disagreement with the level of punishment proposed in the Embryo Protection Bill. Our concerns are confirmed when the proposed punishment for offenders under the proposed law are compared to the punishment for offenders under the Animal Welfare Act. It is unfortunate that the minister has so far remained unclear about whether he intends to consider the foundation's request for an amendment to the Act," spokesperson Paul Vincenti said.

"Without in any way attempting to diminish from the importance of having laws that protect animals, which we agree are necessary, it is widely accepted that a human life holds more dignity and value than that of an animal. The law as proposed sets out to protect human life from fertilisation however the consequences for breaking the same law do not realistically reflect the gravity of any offense committed."

Vincenti said higher penalties were even more pertinent considering that the fines and punishments envisaged in the above bill were at times less than the maximum punishment allowed under the Animal Welfare Act.

"Passing a law in this way is irresponsible as it sends the wrong message and diminishes the value attributed by law to human life. We are urgently insisting that the necessary amendments are made to rectify this situation when the bill is discussed in parliament," Vincenti said.

The government will be increasing the number of oocytes (female ova) that can be fertilised in a bid to increase the efficiency of the in vitro fertilisation process that it is proposing in its bill.

Malta's draft law will ban embryo freezing and instead opt for the vitrification, a form of fast freezing, of oocytes, limiting their fertilisation to three ova while the rest of the ova are frozen for later fertilisation.

By outlawing embryo freezing, the government will also spike the procedure employed by the St James hospital group, the only clinic to provide IVF services for the past 22 years, which procedure raised questions over how many embryos were being implanted inside women. St James adopted a policy not to freeze extra embryos that get created in the IVF process of fertilising a multiple number of female ova.

On average some five to eight ova can be harvested from an infertile woman who undergoes medical stimulation. A morphological assessment of these ova is carried out upon harvesting to see which are the two 'best looking' oocytes to fertilised, before the rest are frozen. Not all eggs may be of good quality to even merit being frozen, she said.