[WATCH] Hundreds protest proposed amendments to IVF laws

Thousands of people descended upon Valletta on Sunday to protest planned amendments to the Embryo Protection Act.

From Castille Square, protestors marched towards St John's Co-cathedral and on towards parliament, where they laid flowers and left a freezer as symbolic gesture against embryo freezing. 

Archbishop Charles Scicluna and Gozo bishop Mario Grech were both present for the protest, as were a number of Nationalist Party MPs including former leader Simon Busuttil and MPs Karol Aquilina, Robert Cutajar, Clyde Puli, Kristy Debono and David Agius. Nickie Vella de Fremeaux, who is married to PN leader Adrian Delia could also be seen among those present.

Protestors, who filled Castille Square, held placards with slogans such as: “Who among us will go in a freezer?”, “I [am embryo] am not an object” and “Orphaned before birth”. 

Read also: An idiot’s guide to how Maltese IVF law will change

The proposed amendments to the country’s IVF laws will, among other changes, lift restrictions on embryo freezing and gamete donation, while broadening the definition of prospective parent to end discrimination against lesbians and single women.

While many professionals working in the field have expressed support for the proposed amendments, opponents of the laws have argued that it goes beyond helping couples conceive, and turns the child into a commodity.

Joseph Mizzi, a paediatrician, said he was in favour of life, which is why he stood with those who could not conceive.

“These people need our support,” he said, adding that the while the amendments being proposed would increase IVF success rates, this would come at a cost.

While some embryos would be brought to term, many others would be killed, while others would be forgotten and eventually disposed of, he said.

Read also: IVF pioneers in Malta agree embryo freezing is a ‘must’

Furthermore, he said that the proposed amendments would also introduce a new form of discrimination since parents would have to choose which of their children they would raise themselves, and which ones would be given up for adoption.

“The embryo needs a voice, as it is human like me and you,” said Mizzi.

Other speakers who addressed the crowd included a couple who could not conceive, but who had made peace with their life’s reality. They said they would not have been able to choose which of their children they would keep, while also questioning what would happen if they were to give one of their embryos up for adoption.

“If the frozen embryo grows up in a different household and asks me why I didn’t choose him, what would I say then?” they said, adding that under the proposed legislation, two biological siblings could meet and eventually marry each other.  

Joanna Rose – a researcher and campaigner against anonymous gamete donation – who was herself born of sperm donation, said she had over 300 brothers and sisters she did not know.

She said her children today could not know who their grandparents, aunts and uncles were. Rose insisted that anonymous gamete donation was wrong, especially when it prevented people from being able to access the right medical treatment.

“One woman who was born in the same clinic as I was needed a bone marrow transplant but couldn’t find any relatives,” she said, insisting that humans and human reproduction were more dignified than an anonymous donation. 

Miriam Sciberras, the chairperson of the Life Network Foundation, said the movement wanted to be the voice of the unborn, because the embryo was “one of us”.

She insisted that the protest was one in favour of life, and was by no means political. She lashed out at the proposed amendments, which she said would not respect the rights of children.

“We are being portrayed as monsters that do not want people to have children,” said Sciberras, adding that the majority of people in Malta were “in favour of life”. 

She lashed out a gynaecologist Mark Sant, who speaking on Xarabank on Friday, said that it was scientifically incorrect to compare an embryo in its early stages to a living human being. Sciberras asked what action the Embryo Protection Authority would be taking against Sant for his opinion.

She also said that the term discrimination was being used too lightly, insisting that single parents not being able to have children was not a matter of discrimination, but nature.

“We are giving babies away as if they were chocolate,” she said. “Where is the equality in that?”

She urged Malta to resist the introduction of embryo freezing, gamete donation and surrogacy. “Where are the MPs that claim to be in favour of life?”

Surrogacy, she said, was merely the exploitation of women. "The woman's womb is used and this woman then must give up her child when it is born."

She said that as the child grew in its mother's womb, it forms a bond with its mother, a bond that surrogacy does not respect.

Sciberras went on to say that surrogacy in many cases lead to women trafficking and was not accepted by many feminist groups across Europe. “Where are the feminists in Malta? Have they disappeared?”

She also questioned why the children’s commissioner had not also issued a statement condemning the proposed law, while urging the government to withdraw the amendment.

“If the amendment is withdrawn it will be government that wins, because it shows that it is prepared to discuss issues.”