When MPs heard a priest justify embryo freezing

An ideologue of the Nationalist Party under Eddie Fenech Adami, Fr Peter Serracino Inglott had made a moral case for embryo freezing 13 years ago.

More controversially, he also made a case for unclaimed frozen embryos to be given up for therapeutic stem cell research.

The controversial thoughts of the philosopher priest, who passed away in 2012, can be found in the transcripts of Parliament’s social affairs committee.

Fr Peter was one of the experts invited by the committee in 2005 to give his views on in-vitro fertilisation.

PN MP Clyde Puli chaired the 2005 parliamentary committee that probed issues linked to IVF

The committee, then chaired by Nationalist MP Clyde Puli, now the PN secretary general, was the first to put a spotlight on IVF, genetic research and the need to regulate the sector. It held 21 meetings on the matter and invited various experts to share their views.

Until then, IVF was only offered at Saint James hospital, a private facility, which had pioneered the treatment in Malta. The country had no law regulating the sector.

In the committee hearing held on 7 February 2005, Fr Peter spoke of the ethical dimension of IVF, embryo freezing, stem cell research and whether the treatment should be available to unmarried couples.

And the priest made some statements that were miles ahead of the position eventually adopted by the PN in subsequent years.

Freedom and justice

“It is important in this field not to be more Catholic than the Pope because even theologians like St Thomas make it clear that if every sin were to become a crime and be prohibited by the law, the result would be tyranny,” Fr Peter said as he outlined the principle that the State should not legislate on the basis of Catholic morality.

Not all that is a sin in Catholic morality should be made illegal by the State, Fr Peter Serracino Inglott told MPs

He urged MPs to go for the least regulation possible, insisting the overriding principle should be freedom of choice. By this he was not advocating for abortion, although he did concede at one point during the hearing that abortion in the case of rape was a very strong argument, even if he did not agree with it.

At the time, assisted procreation was completely unregulated in Malta despite IVF having been available for quite some time in the private sector. Fr Peter considered this to be an injustice.

In 2005, IVF had been available only in the private sector and the process was unregulated

He argued that any legislation should be enacted to fix the “anomaly” by making IVF available in public hospitals but he was less convinced of the need for a law to protect embryos.

“There may be the need, although I am not so convinced about this, for legislation to protect embryos… there may be living creatures threatened by certain practices… but any legislation should not go beyond what is necessary to stop abuse,” Fr Peter advocated.

Scientists not legislators

While he argued for a minimalist but precise law, Fr Peter also cautioned against legislation that was too technical in a field of rapid technological advancement.

Prescribing at law how many embryos could be created could hamper the treatment’s success if science suggested that more embryos were necessary, or fail to do justice with scientific progress if this made it possible to fertilise fewer eggs, he said.

Such decisions, he believed, should not be made by ethicists or legislators but by people with scientific competence.

Stem cell research

While advocating against the creation of unnecessary embryos, Fr Peter said he saw no moral objection to the use of unclaimed embryos in stem cell research for therapeutic purposes.

Research on embryos will remain illegal in the new law before Parliament

“I can imagine a situation whereby some of the unnecessary embryos being produced abroad… be brought to Malta and used for experiments to determine whether stem cells can be used for therapeutic treatments. I find no moral objection to this and see no reason why it should be prohibited.”

Embryo freezing

He also argued against a ban on embryo freezing, insisting this was not equivalent to killing.

“When you freeze an embryo, you are not killing it, but putting it in a state where over a length of time it can degenerate. This means that life is being put at risk, but there is no absolute obligation to preserve life,” Fr Peter said.

He drew an important distinction between the obligation not to destroy human life and the less onerous obligation to ensure its continued survival.

Embryo freezing does not kill an embryo, Fr Peter argued

There was an absolute moral obligation not to kill innocent people and this, he argued, should be prohibited by the law because the action violates the individual’s fundamental human rights.

But preserving life and ensuring its continual survival, was another matter altogether, he noted.

Fr Peter cited as an example the situation of a patient who required extraordinary medical treatment to survive.

“You are never obliged to utilise those extraordinary means… you can also take decisions that reduce the chances for life to be preserved by refusing to accept the treatment. Although the preservation of life is a serious obligation, it is not an absolute principle,” Fr Peter told MPs.

Prudence not the State’s remit

While acknowledging the arguments of those who insisted that extra embryos should not be created when they had a bigger chance of dying, Fr Peter said this prudent way of looking at things was not the remit of the State.

“While prudence is a virtue in individual human behaviour, I absolutely do not believe the State should practise it [prudence] at the expense of other values like justice and freedom,” Fr Peter said, adding that it was not the State’s duty to prohibit embryo freezing.

It is not the State's duty to prohibit embryo freezing

There was nothing wrong in embryos being kept for future use by the couple who created them, even if this meant that frozen embryos risked degenerating naturally over time, he argued.

The State’s obligation was to protect freedom and not to regulate for prudence, Fr Peter insisted.

Unknown fatherhood is problematic

But Fr Peter’s avant-garde views did not prospect a situation were frozen embryos were given up to couples who were not the biological parents, especially if this was done anonymously. The same held for anonymous gamete donations.

Not knowing who the father is can create a problem of identity for the child, Fr Peter said

Fr Peter’s concern on the matter was that the child would not know who his biological parents were, creating a problem of identity.

“While children born without knowing who their father is should not face discrimination, unknown fatherhood should not be brought about intentionally… I find it immoral to generate a person who remains all her life uncertain about her identity but there could be ways on how this could be superseded such as has happened in the case of adopted children,” he told the committee.

Murder of an embryo?

Fr Peter also dealt briefly with the central issue at stake for many people when discussing the subject: when does life begin and is an embryo a person?

He was responding to a concern raised by PN MP Joseph Cassar, who later became health minister in the 2008 legislature, about the ethical dilemma of choosing which embryos to freeze and which should be implanted in the womb.

Cassar asked: “Aren’t we removing the individuality of the embryo by deciding on its behalf to freeze it?”

Fr Peter described this as a rhetorical question because the embryo could never make any such decision. Decisions on behalf of future generations are taken continuously, he pointed out.

Destroying the embryo will still be a grave thing because you should never destroy human life but you still do not have a person and so there aren’t the circumstances to call it a murder Fr Peter Serracino Inglott

What happens to frozen embryos should be a decision taken by the parents and the doctors, who have the duty to keep in mind the welfare of the embryos.

In response to another question by then PN MP Franco Galea over whether the destruction of an embryo outside the womb could be considered murder, Fr Peter insisted he was not advocating for the deliberate destruction of embryos.

But he did question the concept of murder on the basis that there were differing views as to when an embryo could be considered a person.

“There are some who argue that an embryo is a person 24 hours after the fertilisation process and others argue after 14 weeks because until then it is still possible for twins to develop – in this case you cannot call the embryo a person because it can still split into two different persons. Then there is the position adopted by St Thomas, that a person develops when the brain develops. Before that you have human life [but not yet a person]. Destroying the embryo will still be a grave thing because you should never destroy human life but you still do not have a person and so there aren’t the circumstances to call it a murder,” Fr Peter argued.

Married or not

Fr Peter said that until Maltese public policy dictated that the family was based on marriage, he saw no reason why IVF should be allowed among couples who were not married, even if they had been in a stable relationship.

In 2005 Malta still did not have divorce legislation, which meant that separated people who entered into a second relationship had no possibility of getting married again.

At a time when Malta's public policy defined marriage between a man and a woman as the cornerstone of the family, Fr Peter believed IVF should only be available to married couples

Fr Peter argued it would be more appropriate to legislate for divorce – thus allowing couples in irregular situations to re-marry – rather than change the notion of family through the backdoor by using the IVF law.

He did not rule out a separate discussion on the re-definition of the family but insisted if this had to happen it should be clear to all and not done surreptitiously through IVF legislation.

Malta got its first IVF legislation in 2012, following another round of intense meetings by a parliamentary committee that was set up specifically to deal with the controversial issues.

Circumstances have definitely changed since 2005 with the introduction of divorce, the re-definition of marriage to include same-sex couples and the constitutional provision that bars discrimination on the basis of gender and sexual orientation.

It would be preposterous to try and figure out what Fr Peter’s answers would have been to the ethical and moral dilemmas legislators face today as they overhaul IVF legislation.

But his views 13 years ago could serve as a benchmark to help law makers and ordinary people navigate the complex issues at stake.