Proposed IVF Bill turning chidren into a commodity - bishops

Proposed amendments to the Embryo Protection Act turn children into a commodity to satisfy another person’s desire, the bishops said on saturday. In a statement, Archbishop Charles Scicluna and Gozo bishop Mario Grech said the proposed amendments went against the principal aim of the present law which sought to assist infertile couples who were in a stable relationship. In doing so, it also protected the dignity of embryos from beginning of life and throughout their development into childhood by making sure that they were born and raised by their natural mother and father. But in the proposed Bill, the child became a commodity to satisfy another person’s desires. "Anyone who wants a child, whoever he or she may be, can ‘make’ one with the blessing of the proposed law. When the law introduces the possibility of anonymous donors of gametes, the possibility of using another woman’s womb for gestation (surrogacy), the freezing of embryos, it is the law itself that makes the child a commodity," they said. Read: 104 IVF births at Mater Dei in first two years The bishops said it was very worrying to consider that these amendments could produce children who might never know their...