No agreement on surrogacy for embryos of sick mothers

Disagreement in the House on the bill regulating the protection of embryos during assisted reproduction today focused on an amendment proposed by the Opposition to allow surrogate mothers to bear the children of women who, in extreme cases, are taken ill or fall victim to strokes after having had their eggs fertilised.

Justice minister Chris Said signalled his disagreement with this force majeure case as a basis to allow surrogacy. The Opposition's amedment sought to allow the courts of law to decide whether an embryo can be given for surrogacy so that the child is born and 'returned' to its biological parents, rather than adoption to other third parties.

Shadow foreign minister George Vella, a doctor who said his opposition to embryo freezing and surrogacy had matured and accepted that these were acceptable in emergency cases, said embryos that cannot be implanted in their mother should not be left to die naturally.

"Is there something wrong to have this embryo implanted into another woman - a friend or sister who is ready to make this sacrifice - in the case of a mother taken ill or who has a stroke in the period that her egg was fertilised... instead of sending these women abroad, scare them with their legal prosecution? Surrogacy can help in such exceptional cases."

Vella was passionate on this point, saying that the government's blanket opposition to surrogacy risked seeing women who opt for this procedure abroad risk prosecution in Malta.

"We're not agreeing on principle," Said said. "This amendment proposes surrogacy and we disagree with it."

Earlier on in the sitting, which discussed amendments to the Embryo Protection Act and how the egg-freezing IVF being proposed by the government will be regulated, the Opposition moved for an amendment to have 'stable' removed from the definition of opposite-sex couples who can be beneficiaries of IVF.

"It is understood that for somebody to be referred for IVF, a couple must have already exhausted several avenues... one doesn't just wake up and decide to go for IVF, it is preceded by various medical treatments," Labour MP Owen Bonnici said.

"The word 'stable' means that the authority regulating IVF might some day reinterpret this word and exclude certain couples from benefiting from IVF."

Both sides decided to verbalise in the House what they meant by a stable relationship, with a discussion ensuing on the medical process that led couples up to IVF.

"IVF takes time... between medical investigations and treatment, one cannot have doctors automatically allowing some 18-year-old to have IVF. It is crystal clear that when these couples are unable to have children naturally, and consultants know there is no other route but IVF, a long period would have already taken passed."