Most members of the council of the commission for the disabled have objected to embryo genetic testing proposed in the new IVF law, days after the same commission publicly said it backed it.

Eleven out of the 15 council members issued a statement dissociating themselves from the commission’s stance, saying they were not consulted on the question, despite being told they would be.

“By choosing to discard embryos with genetic impairments, we are assuming that the life of someone with an impairment is not worth living,” they said.

“How can prospective parents make an informed choice if they are only presented with the negative consequences of an impairment? Indeed, there is much more to the life of a person who has a disability.”

On Thursday, the Commission for the Rights of Persons with Disability backed government plans to allow testing of IVF embryos for nine rare genetic conditions before implantation in the womb.

It said people should have a right to choose not to pass on their genetic disorders to their children.

But the 11 council members are saying the commission’s position “is seriously undermining all the efforts of the disabled people’s movement in Malta in the past few decades”.

Service will only save families endless pain and suffering- pro-choice NGOs

Last week, parliament began debating the amendments to the IVF law. Among other things, the law would allow doctors to test embryos for nine rare genetic conditions and only plant healthy ones in the mother’s womb.

The Nationalist Party opposes the amendment and so do a dozen other pro-life organisations as well as the Church, bar one priest, Fr Colin Apap, who publicly backed the law over the weekend.

They argue one cannot choose who gets to be born and who does not and freezing the unhealthy embryos indefinitely means the state will start deliberately discarding people with disability.

The 11 council members said that, if passed, the new IVF law will “directly increase intolerance towards people with genetic conditions who are already born, i.e. because they should have been eliminated at an earlier stage”.

But the government and pro-choice NGOs say the service will only save families and young children “endless pain and suffering”.

They defended the law, arguing it will not kill babies because the embryos will not be discarded but frozen. Rather, they noted, it will help parents have more healthy babies.