Teary MPs in passionate plea for law on test-tube babies

Kenya: MPs Wednesday made an emotional call to help childless couples get offspring through invitrofertilisation.

Mrs Millie Mabona (Mbita) teamed up with Mrs Joyce Lay (Taita Taveta) as they pleaded with their colleagues to back a Bill that will deal with children born out of invitrofertilisation.

They said the legal regime right now required parents of such children to move to court to claim them, especially where surrogate mothers are involved.

They threw out religious beliefs and spoke about the “modern reality” of impotent and barren mothers, who have to turn to science to get children. They said the practice has been underground, but the time had come for it to be included into the country’s statute.

“What we have tried to do is to be sensitive to religious issues but at the same time meet the reality. If we don’t pass this law, it is not that invitrofertilisation will be unlawful, therefore it will still go on. The only problem is that the courts will have to now and again litigate on this issue,” said Mabona, the sponsor of the Invitrofertilisation Bill.

The two women lawmakers spoke of abuses they have suffered because of their childless life, and spoke of unprintable “below the belt” abuses that have been thrown their way in the course of their political work.

Mabona gave the story of Lay’s tribulation in the corridors of justice, because Lay had to fight to get the custody of her child born out the process.

“Lay had to go for this, because of medical reasons. But after she got the child, she was forced to go to court for an order to adopt her own child, even though she is the biological mother,” said Mabona.

She said it costs between Sh300,000 and Sh1 million per cycle, and “when it fails the money is not refunded”.

The Mbita MP added, “God gave me a special opportunity to be in this House for a purpose. I have met many women who are having challenges with having children. I will be their voice.”

For Lay, who spoke in a sorrowful timbre with a hint of tears on her eyes, the struggle for women visiting clinics to get children through scientific means was real.

The chairman of the Health Committee Rachel Nyamai (Kitui South) and Robert Pukose (Endebess) said the committee had rejected the Bill and asked that the issue of invitrofertilisation be handled through the comprehensive Health Bill.

“The Bill raises serious ethical issues, among them, the right to life. It is potential for abuse through research. The age of consent is also a problem and so is the position of the Bill versus homosexuality, and how it will be used between married and unmarried couples,” said Pukose, as he raised the concerns of religious leaders, who were apprehensive of the potential for commercial abuse.

They asked Mabona to withdraw the Bill.

But John Mbadi (Suba) rejected the moral angle.

“I am also a Christian. I profess the Seventh Adventist faith. But we need to accept certain realities. I have read the Bible from the first to the last chapter. The Bible says we must reproduce, it does not say how. It does not say there must be sexual intercourse. To use religion to fight something whose time has come is being fundamentalist,” said Mbadi.

Mbadi argued that the procedure was ongoing in many major hospitals.

MPs dismissed the Health Committee’s position and said the Health Bill had become a mirage that the committee was using to dissuade lawmakers from making laws to deal with health problems. They said the concern about the religious angle was wrong.

“It is like refusing to get into a car, because we have two feet. These are born out of fear. The same God who allows us to procreate is the same one who has given us this new knowledge,” said Isaac Mwaura (nominated MP).