100 university academics voice concerns over proposed IVF law changes

A hundred University of Malta academics have grouped together to highlight their concerns regarding the proposed amendments to the current IVF laws.

The academics, who hail from a number of faculties and department and include former university rector Juanito Camilleri and judge Giovanni Bonello, issued a document emphasising that the suggested changes to the law would “gravely weaken the protection of the human embryo at its most vulnerable stage.”

On embryo freezing, they said that while this could potentially increase the odds of a successful pregnancy, it comes at the psychological, legal and moral cost of producing “excess embryos and the need for ‘embryo orphanages’ and ‘embryo donations’”.

“It also involves selecting some for implantation and others for freezing, giving the former a chance to develop and placing the latter in a ‘frozen limbo,” the academics said.

They said that the proposed selection of two out of three or out of five embryos leads to the “unequal treatment between one embryo and another, discriminating against some simply because they cannot take action to protect their interests.”

The academics pointed out the health risks connected with the anonymous donation of gametes, emphasising while the proposed amendments do attempt to reduce the transmission of genetic disease, gamete donation may “result in potential psychological consequences which may complicate the identity formation process of eventual offspring.”

“Anonymous gamete donation makes a mockery of the child’s right to know his or her biological origin,” they underscored.

Regarding the matter of surrogacy, which they referred to as “another form of commodification of women’s body, [involving] a fragmentation and trivialisation of parenthood”, they said although altruistic surrogacy is on the face of it a gesture of selfless altruism, it is “in practice, fraught with numerous biological, legal and ethical problems.”