Rights of the embryo - Legal status must be put beyond doubt

FAR reaching implications of a legislative, religious, moral and social nature flow from yesterday’s High Court finding that the protection offered in the Constitution to the unborn does not extend to embryos outside the womb.

Effectively, the court’s decision leaves a glaring question mark hanging over the imponderable question of when human life begins. Not for the first time, the onus for decision-making has been thrown into the lap of politicians who have been reluctant to grasp the nettle up to now.

In his landmark ruling, which may yet be appealed to the Supreme Court, Mr Justice Brian McGovern said it had never been in the minds of people voting on the 1983 Constitutional Amendments on Article 40.3.3 that the unborn meant anything other than the foetus in the womb.