Minister who will regulate IVF ‘boasts’ about unregulated IVF

Family minister Chris Said has attempted to undercut Joseph Muscat's pledge for an IVF law as a new Labour government's first legislative act, by insisting that in vitro fertilisation has been practiced freely in Malta for 20 years.

While Said is expected to present a bill to regulate IVF in the coming weeks, the minister has boasted that IVF - currently only offered by the private sector, and at considerable cost - has allowed some 750 women to have children since 1991.

"Muscat is mistaken. Today there is no limitation on giving birth through IVF," Said said.

IVF in Malta is freely available but it actually comes at great cost because only the private sector offers the service.

Private hospitals' free hand on IVF is now about to undergo a serious regulation with government's new bill. Two parliamentary committees have proposed differing views on the regulation of IVF, and questions remain unanswered as to whether the freezing of excess embryos created during fertilization will be allowed by the state.

Muscat has made an IVF law one of the main planks of his forthcoming electoral programme, having criticised the government for never utilising state-of-the-art IVF equipment installed at Mater Dei Hospital.

In a statement, Said said IVF was a sensitive matter that should not be treated in a partisan manner.

"The new bill has been drafted in consultation with various stakeholders, after the sterling work that was done by the select committee for the regulation of medically assisted procreation led by MP Jean Pierre Farrugia.

"This law will safeguard the rights of parents, but also those of embryos and children born with IVF, which will be provided by Mater Dei Hospital," Said said.

While Said has not commented on the restrictions that this new law will include, specifically whether embryo freezing will be allowed and whether women will have a maximum number of embryos implanted in their wombs, the family minister called on Muscat to declare what restrictions "he wants to introduce in an IVF law because IVF so far is taking place without any limitation."

On Sunday, Muscat pledged that an IVF law will be Labour's first legislative act if elected power, commenting on the recent death of the first woman to have given birth using in vitro fertilisation back in 1970s.

"We're not giving these families a chance to have children," Muscat, whose own children were born using the treatment which is available in Malta but only in the private sector, and so far unregulated by a national protocol. "Every minute we lose in not giving mothers this chance, is a minute of their life being stolen," Muscat said.

A report published by the parliamentary select committee on assisted procreation calls for the freezing of embryos, in what is a substantial advance in recommendations first made by the Social Affairs Committee in 2005. But the latter committee reignited its own debate after the Farrugia committee, and proposed contrasting views to those advanced by Farrugia.

The freezing of embryos will allow women to go through less cycles of stimulation, to produce enough ova (eggs) that can be fertilised artificially and then implanted. "Ideally, two eggs would be implanted," Nationalist MP and committee chairman Jean Pierre Farrugia, who is a doctor, said of the committee proposals. "Freezing would also reduce mortality and morbidity caused to the woman by hormone stimulating therapy."

But the committee wants to preclude the possibility of sperm donation, in a bid to encourage sterile couples to adopt frozen embryos that are not required by the couples who have been successful in childbearing.