Test Tube Babies Have No Inherent Right to Life Rules Irish High Court

By Hilary White
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  DUBLIN, November 16, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Human beings at the embryonic stage do not have an inherent right to life says a High Court Justice in the Republic of Ireland. Never having been implanted in a uterus, frozen IVF embryos do not qualify as “the unborn” and are therefore not covered under Ireland’s constitutional protection said Justice Brian McGovern
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“There has been no evidence … to establish that it was ever in the mind of the people voting on the Eight Amendment to the Constitution that ‘unborn’ meant anything other than a fetus or child within the womb,” McGovern added.
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  Reuters UK reports on the ruling in the case in which an Irish woman was suing her estranged husband for the right to rescue the embryos left in frozen storage after her IVF treatments. Some pro-life observers were wondering if this case would begin to acknowledge the complete humanity of persons at the embryonic stage and start a domino that might effect IVF and ultimately abortion legislation.
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  McGovern’s ruling has staved off the day of reckoning for permissive IVF laws in most of the European Union and for the moment maintained the legal bubble of protection for the multi-billion dollar international fertility industry.
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  McGovern cited the “debate which has existed over centuries,” over when the “genetic material becomes a ‘human being’” saying that it is not within the jurisdiction of the court to decide.
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“It is not the function of the courts to choose between competing religious and moral beliefs,” McGovern said.
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  It has been pointed out ceaselessly in pro-life publications and material that the full humanity of an embryo is a matter not of religious belief but biological science. The secular media, however, have established the public wisdom that the moral status of embryos is entirely a matter of “competing religious beliefs” and is therefore a private matter.
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  Most media reports and legislation employ a host of euphemisms to avoid the conclusion that was stated clearly recently in a National Post editorial. Pro-abortion columnist, Michael Kinsley, pointed out this July what pro-life advocates have been saying for years: “If embryos are human beings with full human rights, fertility clinics are death camps—with a side order of cold-blooded eugenics.”
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  Although he was attacking what he considers the inconsistency of pro-life advocates in his column, Kinsley unintentionally pointed out the studiously unacknowledged conflict in courts and in law created by IVF, saying, “If embryos are human beings, the routine practices of fertility clinics are far worse—both in numbers and in criminal intent—than stem-cell research.”
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  Courts around the world are in confusion in the effort to protect not only the IVF industry but, by logical extension, legalized abortion.
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  In Chicago, a court ruled in February 2005, that a couple was entitled to sue for the wrongful death of their child when an IVF embryo was carelessly disposed of by staff at a fertility clinic. Judge Jeffrey Lawrence II of the Cook County court said, “a pre-embryo is a ‘human being’ … whether or not it is implanted in its mother’s womb.”
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  At the same time, legislation has been enacted throughout the United States and around the world that treats embryonic children as luxury consumer products that may be donated for research when clients of a clinic have no further use for them.
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  In Washington in 2002, a court ruled the opposite, that embryos could be destroyed by a fertility clinic because the estranged husband of the mother refused permission for the embryos to be implanted in a surrogate.
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  Read related LifeSiteNews.com coverage:
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  If Embryos are Human then Fertility Clinics are Death Camps: Pro-abortion Columnist
https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2006/jul/06072105.html
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  Chicago Court Rules Dead IVF Embryo a “Human Being”
https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2005/feb/05020706.html
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  Washington Supreme Court Orders Death of Human Embryos Against Mother’s Will
https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2002/jun/02061403.html
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  Uk Fertility Authority Okays Designer Baby Selection
https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2002/feb/02022502.html