Still, it’s a completely fair stance for a politician who believes in the sanctity of life from the moment of conception. After all, once the law passes and it becomes clear that no one is going to adopt all the cryopreserved deformed embryos it will create, the government will invariably face pressure to discard them.

And that will be another chink in the armour of the government’s argument against the legalisation of abortion.

Most importantly though, at least people know where they stand with Delia with regards to this issue.

This is an extremely tough and sensitive debate. On the one hand, there are prospective parents whose lives will be forever changed by this law, which will finally give them a chance to have a healthy child. On the other hand, there are ethical concerns attached to giving people the choice of who gets to born and who doesn’t.

While the current Maltese law only allows genetic testing for nine rare conditions (such as Huntington’s and gangliosidosis) other countries have taken it a few steps further.

For example, Denmark offers free prenatal Down syndrome screening to every pregnant woman –  most mothers take the test and 95% of those who receive a positive Down syndrome diagnosis choose to abort.

It’s not unnatural to wonder whether Malta could end up following Denmark’s lead, particularly since the nation’s IVF laws have already been updated twice in less than a decade.

Many politicians will tell you that, when it comes to controversial topics, change must be carried out incrementally, with society growing more accepting to having the envelope pushed forward at each juncture.

The big bioethical debate over the new IVF law should have been whether people should have a right to choose to give birth to healthy children, whether they should have a right in certain cases (and if so, why some cases and not others?) or whether doing so risks opening Pandora’s box of eugenics.

It’s a tough debate but politicians aren’t only elected to meet people, take photos and write inspirational quotes, but to wade into tricky debates and ultimately take decisions about matters that impact society, even if they will be met with criticism.

Both Government and Opposition MPs failed here.

The way the PN made a complete dog’s breakfast of the debate has been well-documented. 

After Bernard Grech initially came out against the bill, he once again U-turned following pressure by his parliamentary group and took on the following stance: the PN disagrees with the genetic testing of embryos but will vote in favour of the bill anyway because it has now been amended to include a reference to polar body testing on unfertilised oocytes as an alternative.

It’s a very odd stance. If the PN is against the genetic testing of embryos, then surely it should oppose it out of principle, not just ensure that another less effective option (as polar body testing only detects genetic conditions coming from the mother, not the father) is enshrined in the law.

After all, given the choice between two options, it’s fair to say that many prospective parents will choose the most effective one. 

However, the PL MPs were disappointing too. Granted, the bill was only presented following internal discussions within the PL but could it be that all 44 of them were perfectly fine with the bill the way it was presented? 

Most jarring was the way no PL MP spoke out against the bizarre caveat in the bill that requires all embryos found with a serious genetic condition to be cryopreserved in the hope that an effective treatment will one day be found and someone decides to adopt them. 

Why on earth would anyone choose to give birth to and raise a complete stranger’s embryo that they know has a serious genetic problem when they have the option of giving birth to a healthy embryo or adopting a baby that has already been born? 

Does every single PL MP agree that this is a fair utilisation of the national health system’s resources? Of course they don’t, not really, but the fear of publicly contradicting the government on anything is so entrenched that they would rather pass a flawed law than risk coming off as a “rebel” and annoying Robert Abela. 

So instead of a parliamentary bioethical debate, all we got was two political balancing acts.

PN MPs balanced two concerns – the concern that supporting the bill could see them lose support from the party’s grassroots and the concern that opposing the bill could see it lose it even more public support.

PL MPs had to balance their desire for Robert Abela to score a legislative “victory” within the first 100 days following the election with their knowledge that they are passing a bill with pointless caveats just so that the government can push the discussion on abortion even further down the line.

And after all this, we still don’t know what most MPs actually think about the bill… except for Adrian Delia and Alex Borg that is.

Delia and Borg have placed their cards on the table for all to see. No bluffs, no riddles, no dog-whistling, just a clear stance that you can either agree with or not. Even if you disagree with their stance, you can still appreciate how refreshing it is in its simplicity.

Don’t be surprised if their openness will see them become the biggest political winners of this debate. If that’s the case, then those MPs who purposely took the route of selective honesty can only have themselves to blame.

What do you think about the proposed IVF law?