Pro-life lobby denies using abortion to scaremonger on embryo freezing

Pro-lifers deny using abortion to scaremonger on embryo freezing

“We do not want to give couples the option to freeze embryos,” Miriam Sciberras, president of LifeNetwork Malta said.

The national health system only provides egg freezing technology for childless mothers, but under new plans MPs will be asked to vote on reintroducing embryo freezing technology in IVF procedures after this was banned in 2012 by the Nationalist government.

Speaking at the Malta International Airport, where the pro-life lobby welcomed US anti-abortion campaigner Gianna Jessen in a bid to reinforce their message against embryo freezing, Sciberras said the success rate of embryo freezing and egg freezing are identical.

Although minutes earlier, Sciberras warned that other countries had introduced abortion by gradually eroding laws protecting embryos, the LifeNetwork head repeatedly insisted “we are not talking about abortion.”
She said the new law only aims at “objectifying life” and remove protection and insisted that Jessen was in Malta “to speak about protecting life from the very beginning, from conception.”

“If the embryo is protected from the very beginning there’s no abortion problem. Abortion happens when life is not protected,” she added.

Sciberras- who believes that life starts from the fertilisation of the embryo - insisted that embryo freezing is tantamount to a loss of life and said “we were all embryos and luckily we weren’t frozen otherwise we wouldn’t be here.”

When challenged to say whether all frozen embryos go to waste, she said “embryo freezing has nothing to do with creating life. Life is already created and you are freezing it instead of allowing it to be born.”

While repeating that frozen embryos have an “uncertain future,” she later said that frozen embryos have a 75% chance of being born.

The Embryo Protection Act currently outlaws embryo freezing, and limits the fertilization of female eggs to just two ova, while the rest of the ova produced during the stimulation process are frozen for their later fertilization.

However the law allows the Embryo Protection Authority to freeze embryos and whether such embryos can be put for up for adoption under a blanket 'force majeure' proviso, Sciberras said that the Stand up for Life campaign has no qualms with the law as it is.

The health ministry is currently carrying out a review of the law, which was the first piece of legislation to address Malta’s unregulated protocols for in vitro fertilization. Prime Minister Joseph Muscat has said that under the proposed law, the number of eggs that can be fertilized will increase to five. Of these fertilized eggs, a maximum of two embryos will be able to be implanted in the mother at one go.

In IVF, it is never a guarantee that each single egg that gets harvested from a woman, will eventually produce an embryo once fertilized and Muscat has said that if out of the five eggs, more than two embryos are produced, the remainder will be frozen so that they can be re-used again by the couple for another cycle.

Jessen, born in 1977 in Los Angeles, California, was born during the 30th week of pregnancy during a failed saline abortion attempt. She weighed 2lbs at birth was born with cerebral palsy.

In a brief address she said she was “alive by the power of jesus Christ,” adding that she was not in malta to shame women but to bring a message of hope.

Jessen has testified before the Australian Parliament, the British House of Commons and the US Congress. “I’m invading the culture as an unconventional woman, just being me,” she says.

The pro-life lobby will hold a rally in Valletta on Sunday 6 December as part of a campaign in favour of the protection of life from conception.