So goes Ireland. An Irish judge has ruled that cryogenically frozen unborn embryonic children has no right to life. Considering that in order to say that someone has no right to life, the presumption of such a right must exist in the first place.
This is a morally incoherent ruling because it creates a tension in Irish law between the constitutional protection for unborn children and this ruling.
Justice Brian McGovern said that while most agreed frozen embryos resulting from infertility treatment deserved special respect, “the right to life of the unborn” in the Irish constitution does not to extend to them.
“I have come to the conclusion that the three frozen embryos are not ‘unborn’,” the judge said in a landmark High Court ruling complicated by the fact that existing legislation does not define “unborn”.
“There has been no evidence ... to establish that it was ever in the mind of the people voting on the Eight (EDS-CORRECT) Amendment to the Constitution that ‘unborn’ meant anything other than a foetus or child within the womb,” McGovern added.
Apparently in the judge’s view whether or not someone has a right to life depends on location, not their humanity. His latter equivocation is just plain dishonest since the average person voting to define a right to life for the unborn would not make such a distinction. It takes a special kind of mind, often found within legalistic parsers of the law, to create such contradictions.
This is also the first step of many to rip the heart out of the constitutional protection for children. Once this loophole is created, many more will eventually be punched through as judges and pro-abortion activists further divine the “minds and intent” of those who voted to protect human life.
The case involves a couple who had their children frozen during fertility treatment and now that they are estranged, the father is fighting to prevent the mother from giving birth to them. Thus the dangers of such interventions into nature.
Technorati Tags:abortion, constitution, embryos, Ireland, right to life
You know, there’s a bad pun about “getting voted off the island” in there, somewhere.