Pro-lifers launch online campaign against embryo freezing

The pro-life lobby Gift of Life is stepping up its campaign against embryo freezing with a series of online adverts taken out on the Times of Malta.

With a draft law regulating in vitro fertilization already presented to the Cabinet of ministers, Gift of Life is mounting a campaign against the freezing of additional embryos that are not implanted in a woman's body during IVF.

"We are confident that most MPs are eager to pass a law to regulate the practice of ART which respects human life from conception. Both political parties have shown a willingness to regulate the current state of affairs. Attempts to promote embryo freezing, which, it is claimed, will facilitate success rates of the treatment however, remain a cause for serious concern," Gift Of Life spokesperson Paul Vincenti said.

The pro-life organisation, which had unsuccessfully petitioned MPs to entrench the Criminal Code's provisions against abortion in the Constitution, said it objects to the freezing of embryos when female egg freezing technology is available.

"IVF treatment may be provided in Malta without having to create excess or spare embryos. The campaign messages will be channeled primarily through social media and later through a series of online pro-life adverts on news portals such as that of the Times of Malta to extend our reach. A series of pro-life adverts are also being aired on local radio stations," Vincenti said.

Gift of Life have been criticised by Nationalist MP Jean Pierre Farrugia, who chaired a parliamentary committee that recommended the adoption of additional embryos, for treating supporters of IVF like 'criminals'.

GoL claim they are not against medically assisted reproduction and that it "understands the hardship of infertile couples" but is against the freezing of human embryos. "The regular creation of 'excess' human lives with no certain future, their freezing and the introduction of tax incentives in a bid to solve an avoidable problem is ethically unsound and certainly not 'pro-life' as is being suggested by Dr Farrugia," the organisation said in a statement in 2011.

Farrugia's initiative to kick-start a fund for the adoption of frozen embryos stems from proposals of the parliamentary committee on IVF regulation which he chaired, which recommends that excess human embryos created in the IVF process should be adopted.