Supreme Court abandoned cause of innocents

THE Supreme Court failed to defend and vindicate the right to life of the three frozen embryos (Roche v Roche, December 15) on the grounds that it judged them not to be “unborn” within the context of article 40.3.3 of the Irish constitution and on the grounds that their biological father objected to the defence and vindication of their right to life.

The judgment was unwise because it choose to leave three cryo-preserved embryos in a freezer thereby ensuring their certain death while their mother pleaded for their life. The judgment was unreasonable because the chief justice acknowledged the moral status and dignity afforded to the human embryo when he said “I think it can be said that the human embryo is generally accepted as having moral qualities and a moral status” and “its creation and use cannot be divorced from our concepts of human dignity” – but he failed to vindicate and defend the right that proceeds from that moral status and dignity.

The judgment was not clear thinking because the embryos were created and frozen with the full consent of their father, but to what end? To be thrown out like so many frozen peas past their “sell-by date”?