Why some PN MPs supported leave for IVF overseas, are against current amendments

Deciphering the vote

Helena Grech Four Nationalist Party MPs stressed that their decision indirectly supporting a government motion granting subsidised leave to receive IVF treatment abroad and their decision to vote against the revamped IVF amendments are rooted in the principle of equality.

Last year, Prime Minister Joseph Muscat’s government issued a legal notice granting 60 hours of paid leave to an employee wanting to undergo IVF treatment overseas and another 40 hours for the other prospective parent, should there be one.

In the legal notice, ‘prospective parents’ are defined by any individuals, and the definition of ‘medically assisted procreation’ was far wider than what is provided in the national law regulating IVF entitled the ‘Embryo Protection Act’.

Despite IVF being available in Malta, the legal notice was issued to cater for lesbian couples, infertile single women or heterosexual couples who may have wanted to make use of embryo freezing overseas. As the IVF law currently stands, it is only heterosexual couples who are able to make use of IVF in Malta, and embryo freezing is only permitted in very exceptional circumstances.

PN Leader Adrian Delia had objected to the legal notice, arguing that the definition of prospective parent and medically assisted procreation in the notice is different to the definitions of the same terminology in the Embryo Protection Act.

The PN had filed a motion, “in order for there to be legal coherence” to amend the government’s legal notice so that the definitions are identical to those in the Embryo Protection Act, effectively taking away paid leave from lesbian couples, infertile women or heterosexual couples wanting to make use of embryo freezing. Delia argued that if government wanted to change the definitions of prospective parents, it should do so at the source – through the Protection Act – and not through the side door – through the legal notice.

Embryo freezing is carried out to increase the success rate of women becoming pregnant through the procedure, by fertilising additional eggs and freezing them in the event that the implanted ones do not take.

Six PN MPs – Simon Busuttil, Mario de Marco, Karol Aquilina, Therese Comodini Cachia, Karl Gouder and Chris Said – had abstained from their leader’s motion, stating that they morally objected to it.

Fast-forward to 2018 and Parliament has been debating the government’s IVF amendments which would permit embryo freezing, open up IVF to homosexual couples and individuals, and decriminalise altruistic surrogacy. The amendments would therefore pave the way for the establishment of sperm and egg banks.

Recently, these amendments were discussed in Parliament and voted on at the second reading stage (the penultimate vote before it is passed into national law) and all PN MPs voted against them.

General consensus among the PN camp was that the amendments commoditise human life by allowing embryo freezing. Delia repeatedly said that the PN protects life from conception until “natural death”.

Some PN MPs had taken particular issue with the provision of surrogacy, with former leader Simon Busuttil calling for the gov- ernment not to play God.

Following the two separate events, The Malta Independent on Sunday contacted the six MPs who had abstained from their leader’s Parliamentary motion: Simon Busuttil, Chris Said, Karol Aquilina, Karl Gouder, Therese Comodini Cachia and Mario de Marco.

This newsroom asked why they had shown tacit support of the government’s legal notice providing single women or lesbian couples with IVF treatment abroad by abstaining from Delia’s motion but voted against the government’s IVF amendments.

The legal notice would have paved the way for homosexual female couples and single women to have subsidised leave by receiving IVF treatment abroad, and the possibility of embryo freezing, when one huge bone of contention in the current debate is the provision of embryo freezing.

Busuttil and de Marco gave very similar replies as to why they had abstained in respect of the motion but voted against the Embryo Protection Act, to the effect that the legal notice (LN) in question was dif- ferent to the recent changes to the Embryo Protection Act, which the PN Parliamentary Group could not support for several reasons. The LN was effectively about leave entitlement and gave the same leave entitlement to couples who had IVF treatment abroad as those having IVF treatment in Malta.

Comodini Cachia said: The two legislative proposals have different purposes and hence require different consideration. One deals with equal treatment in accessing leave entitlement and the other deals with the use of scientific methods to create life, what to do with it once created and also with consent and State authority on this process. “The legal notice providing prospective parents undergoing IVF treatment with 100 hours of leave treats both people undergoing this treatment in Malta as well as abroad equally and offers them the same leave entitlement. The amendments to the Embryo Protection Act are of a different character and I cannot support it for a number of reasons.” Aquilina gave a similar response: “The proposed amendments to the Embryo Protection Act introduce the possibility of anonymous donors of gametes, surrogacy and the freezing of embryos. In short, the proposed amendments make the child a commodity and encourage the exploitation of women for reproductive purposes.

“On the other hand, Legal Notice 156 of 2017 was about the granting of 100 hours of paid leave to couples undergoing IVF treatment abroad. Essentially, the legal notice provided for equal treatment with respect to leave entitlement for those couples seeking IVF treatment, be it in Malta or abroad. I still believe all working couples should be able to enjoy leave benefits with no discrimination.”

What the MPs failed to consider is that the government’s legal notice did not simply provide leave for working couples, but also for single women. In addition, it did not simply grant equal leave entitlement regardless of whether seeking the service abroad or not, since there are considerations to be made in that overseas, the freezing of embryos is far more accepted.

The remaining MPs failed to answer by the time of going to print.