The plight of infertile couples

I refer to the presentation entitled Biotechnology In Malta And Human Rights made by the Commissioner for Children, Sonia Camilleri, to the Social Affairs Committee of the House of Representatives on May 23.

To her credit Ms Camilleri was carrying out her duties and honouring her responsibilities as Commissioner for Children (repeat, for children) and not just expressing her personal opinion. The Commissioner for Children is a very important local institution not answerable to the government but to Parliament. She said she was honouring a particular responsibility, according to section 9h of the Commissioner for Children Law of 2003 "to promote the highest standards of health and social services for women during pregnancy and to promote social care and protection, including adequate legal protection, for children both before and after birth".

She was very emphatic that she was there to represent, promote the interests of and ask for legal protection for those persons who were "voiceless" and "could not defend themselves" and could not make their own presentation to the House committee. She was referring to "the embryos", "those little living children", as she called them. She was referring to unborn children.

On May 6, the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Justice Tonio Borg addressed the participants at the National Conference on the Well-Being of the Unborn Child, organised by the Malta Midwives Association and the Movement for the Rights, Protection and Development of the Unborn Child, which consists of 40 organisations.

When he announced that the government was launching a national proposal so that Parliament would eventually entrench the law on abortion in the Malta Constitution he was doing exactly the same thing the Commissioner for Children did before the House Committee on May 23. He was promoting the interests of unborn children and suggesting how to extend further legal protection to them. Obviously he was also representing the official stand of the Cabinet of Ministers on this matter.

The Commissioner for Children was not insensitive, definitely, to the plight of infertile couples. She showed she is very sympathetic to them and also made very concrete suggestions how they could be helped. In fact she was also defending their interests. She was defending them from the risks involved at a moment in time when the system, according to scientific evidence she produced, could not guarantee a healthy life for children born through IVF. She emerged as a leader to them.

Her critics are not being fair to her. Unfortunately, the Commissioner for Children is either being dismissed lightly or called a fundamentalist for doing exactly what she is supposed to do according to Maltese law, defend unborn children.

Ironically this unfair and misguided criticism is being made at a time when the vast majority of the Maltese people, and so many local institutions, are clamouring for the defence of unborn children in the public debate about the entrenchment of the abortion law in the Constitution.

Indeed the Commissioner for Children emerged as a strong leader in the defence of the dignity, rights, protection and development of unborn children in the Maltese islands.