Crusade against loving couples

The IVF bill proposed by government is unworkable and humiliating. Through it government wants to pry into the bedrooms of local couples and dictate what they do. Couples facing difficulties to have babies have to appear before a board and admit impotence and conditions that make it very hard for them - if not impossible - to have babies the natural way. The lives of mothers are going to be put at risk as the rate of success in the procedures allowed is next to nothing.

With Archbishop Paul Cremona out of action for health reasons, the former Archbishop Guzeppi Mercieca and Gozo Bishop Mario Grech have taken over the running of the local Catholic Church and are intent on leading a crusade against IVF. They believe that the Maltese Church was too soft and weak on the divorce issue and feel that had it followed the militant line taken by the Gozo Church, the referendum would have been won by the No camp and the introduction of divorce stopped.

Mercieca and Grech wrote the pastoral letter issued on the eve of the publication of the IVF bill and in it they made it clear that all forms of IVF are to be opposed.

Several priests were shocked about how insensitive and backward looking the pastoral letter was and refused to read it in church. A list of these priests is being compiled and action is to be taken against them.

Very few priests dare come out in the open against Mercieca and Grech. So far the only to speak very clearly has been Dr Rev Rene' Camilleri who said that there should be Church-State separation and that the state has the duty to legislate for all citizens, not just Catholics and the State has its own ethical principles that are not necessarily in line with those of the Catholic Church. He called on the Church to show more empathy and be forward looking. He celebrated the contribution of science to improve life and the dignity of human beings.

Local IVF practitioners are interpreting government's decision to bring ultra-conservative Catholic Eleonora Porcu to Malta as an IVF expert as a move in the direction of having the local IVF facilities at Mater Dei under the control of the Vatican. Porcu has been Medical Doctor and Assistant Professor in Reproductive Medicine at the University of Bologna since 1977.

Porcu was the main speaker during a public seminar about different methods used in assisted procreation and in vitro fertilisation (IVF) held at the Grand Hotel Excelsior in Floriana on Thursday.

The seminar was organised by the Ministry for Justice, Dialogue and the Family together with the Ministry for Health, the Elderly and Community Care.

Both ministries have published a very restrictive and conservative bill to introduce IVF in Malta that goes against the work done in parliament by the Social Affairs Committee that had reached consensus on the way forward. The bill was published the day after local bishops issued a pastoral letter against IVF. The bill is even more restrictive than the one that had been pushed in Italy, not to give couples the opportunity to have children and form a family but to be in line with a church that is out of touch with reality and humanity.

At a Vatican conference on infertility last February, Pope Benedict XVI railed against reproductive technologies like in vitro fertilisation.

Speaking in the Vatican to an audience of conservative researchers and medical experts like Porcu, the Pope warned against the "easy income" that could be made from the "fascination of the technology of artificial fertility". Both scientists and the families who benefit from scientific advances in fertility treatment are guilty of "the arrogance of taking the place of the Creator", Benedict said.

I agree with what Jon O'Brien of Catholics for Choice had said in reaction to the speech of the Pope: "Catholics around the world will be saddened at the label 'arrogant' being applied to couples seeking help to have children and the doctors who try to help them. The Pope's remarks only serve to drive another wedge between people of faith and the Church hierarchy. This attack on reproductive technologies is yet another display of the Vatican's lack of empathy and understanding and a vain attempt to hold back scientific development as well as impede access to reproductive technologies for couples around the world."

The author is shadow minister for education