PN, PL women branches clash over embryo freezing, surrogacy

The women branches of the Nationalist and Labour parties are at loggerheads over the latter group’s recommendations for legal reforms to in vitro fertilization practices in the national health service.

In a statement, the PN women’s movement (Moviment Nisa PN) accused Prime Minister Joseph Muscat of hiding behind the “non-functioning” Labour Women (Nisa Laburisti) to manipulate public opinion over changes to IVF laws.

“The amateurish way in which Joseph Muscat wants to introduce something as sensitive as embryo fertilisation and surrogacy beggars belief,” the MNPN said. “The out-of-the-blue statement by the Labour Women in the thick of summer shows Muscat’s way of doing politics. He prefers to hide behind the non-functioning Labour Women’s outfit to fly a kite and manipulate public opinion instead of coming clean and telling the people what he thinks.”

The MNPN said Muscat should come out in public to state whether he is in favour or against embryo fertilisation, surrogacy, and embryo freezing.

Nisa Laburisti on Tuesday called on the government to consider surrogacy, with a limitation on commercial surgery.

Their recommendations to the inter-ministerial IVF review working committee also called for the introduction of embryo freezing, the anonymity of sperm donors, and the possibility of exchanging ova and sperm donations with foreign banks.

However, the MNPN warned that the topics of embryo freezing and surrogacy are far too delicate to be “thrown into the public domain by the non-functioning NL” and rather deserve proper study and public consultation.

‘MNPN should publish their own recommendations’ – NL

Nisa Laburisti retorted by calling on the “negative” MNPN to publish their own recommendations that they could have put forward to the IVF working group.

“We only submitted out recommendations after speaking with relevant stakeholders, including professionals and people who have undertaken IVF both in Malta and abroad,” NL president Claudette Abela Baldacchino said.