Embryonic confusion

In his homily Mgr Grech talked of the 'sorrow' experienced by childless couples with fertility problems. While sympathising with their plight, he went on to deliver a scathing attack on assisted fertility treatment such as IVF - comparing a widely accepted medical practice to abortion: which is not only illegal in this country; but also the subject of widespread revulsion.

Unsurprisingly, the bishop's remarks were met with shock and incredulity, and have since been dissected by medical professionals involved directly in the debate. Dr Jean Pierre Farrugia - both a medical doctor, and also a government MP who chaired parliament's special committee of assisted reproduction therapy - concluded that Mgr Grech had used statistics pertaining only Britain's experience with IVF; and worse still, that he made no distinction whatsoever between 'embryos' and 'babies', with rather confusing results.

All this makes for a dangerously misleading argument. For instance, Mgr Grech referred to how 3,000,000 pregnancies induced by IVF since 1978 resulted in only 100,000 healthy babies being born. Apart from the fact that the statistics were lifted from British press reports dating to 2006, Mgr Grech went on to draw all the wrong conclusions.

Compare for a moment the 30% success rate cited above, to the estimated success rate in a corresponding 3,000,000 pregnancies which had occurred naturally (i.e., no IVF was involved). In the latter case, the percentage of embryos which will be spontaneously aborted is entirely comparable to Mgr Grech's estimate of 30%. In fact the World Health Organisation places it considerably higher - as much as 50% (i.e., 1.5 million embryos), no less... bearing in mind that spontaneous miscarriages tend to occur at the very early stages of pregnancy, before the mother even knows she is pregnant. For obvious reasons, these statistics will not be included in the 'official' list of recorded miscarriages.

This in turn suggests that the process of sexual reproduction favoured by the Church is itself highly abortive: ironically, much more abortive than IVF treatment (at least, when regulated by legislation such as that currently under review by parliament).

But there is another, more insidious flaw in the Bishop's reasoning... a flaw illustrated most forcefully by Rev. Prof. Emmanuel Agius, the Church's official spokesman on bioethics, who both defended and contradicted Grech's claims practically in the same breath.

Prof. Agius was quoted as saying the following in connection with Grech's claims: "If you remove an embryo from a uterus it's considered an abortion. If you are talking about a human being in a Petri dish, it's not an abortion."

However, he added that both IVF and abortion entail "the wilful destruction of an innocent and vulnerable human being... It's a matter of language really. We need to know what we are talking about. But morally, and from an ethical viewpoint, one is no less than the other."

And yet, Agius (unlike Grech) goes on to argue in favour of regulating IVF at law, despite the Church's misgivings: "It's better to have a law than not to have a law," he significantly added. But this only opens a veritable Pandora's Box of further questions and doubts.

After all, if IVF and abortion are "no less than each other"... and then why should Malta consent to regulating IVF, but not abortion? And using the same reasoning: shouldn't Prof. Agius's support for IVF legislation not also be interpreted as an indirect  argument in favour of legally regulating abortion?

At face value this appears to be a conundrum. Until, of course, you realise where the flaw in the argument lies. Truth is that the entire premise is wrong, on two counts: one, an embryo is not a foetus (still less a baby); and two, 'destruction' of embryos does not occur 'wilfully' in IVF, as it does in abortion.

There is in fact a world of difference between the two scenarios. In IVF, embryos are artificially implanted into a womb, and some fail to survive - something that happens all the time in nature, without any fuss being made. Abortion by medical intervention, on the other hand, involves the deliberate termination of a pregnancy in cases where the embryo will have not only survived the initial stages after fertilisation... but gone on to develop into a foetus.

At a glance the distinction is really quite simple, so why do people like Mgr Grech find it so hard to see?

The answer can be summed up in one word: 'politics'. By confusing embryos with foetuses, and IVF with abortion, Mgr Grech is simply extending the same political strategy that the Church had used (unsuccessfully, as it happens) in last year's divorce debate. He hopes to exploit an existing national revulsion towards abortion in order to engender a similar revulsion towards IVF.

And as this is a purely political line of reasoning - as opposed to a scientific and/or rational one - it is not exactly surprising that it would also make no sense whatsoever when exposed to the rigorous scrutiny of science.