Frozen embryos have no right to life: Irish court

Reuters ^ | November 15, 2006 | Paul Hoskins

[Irish_Thatcherite]

Mistake:

It's the High Court, not the Supreme Court - I assume this can be therefore challenged further.

[MonroeDNA]

Just making sure of your position.

So if a woman and a man conceive, but the single cell does not implant into the uteres, but is discharged instead, it should be saved and nursed to life?

Is that your position?

[Irish_Thatcherite]

How does anyone even know if that happens?

[fanfan]

Thanks for the ping Irish.

I'm happy to know your constitution protects the most innocent.

[MonroeDNA]

"Miscarriages and natural failures to implant are not deliberate killings. Christians believe that God has the power of life and death; we don't."

So it is OK for nature to kill, and you should do nothing about it?

If God decides to make a woman miscarry at one day, should we do nothing?

What about one week?

What about one month?

What about 28 weeks?

When do we intervene? Or do we intervene? Who decides?

What if a woman miscarries at 15 weeks? Should we do what we can to save it?

[MonroeDNA]

Of course it happens, all the time.

[NYer]

if a frozen embryo was treated by law as identical to a fetus in a womb, then you could be prosecuted for murder I guess if you made a lab error and killed one of them, or if the power went out and the cryogenics stopped working.

RIGHT TO LIFE
2270 Human life must be respected and protected absolutely from the moment of conception. From the first moment of his existence, a human being must be recognized as having the rights of a person -- among which is the inviolable right of every innocent being to life.
Catechism Catholic Church

[NYer]

Ping!

[Irish_Thatcherite]

That's not what I meant, let me rephrase that - how does anyone know when it happens? If it can be known, then sure - then try and save the life.

[Irish_Thatcherite]

Thanks for the ping Irish.

You're welcome!

I'm happy to know your constitution protects the most innocent.

Yeah, pity our High and Supreme Courts disregard the very wording of it! That article was passed by Referendum in 1984 - but at the time it was predicted that the Supreme Court would make an ambigous ruling based on 'equal regard for the life of the woman', and the X-Case Ruling in 1992 considered suicidal tendancies to be a 'threat to life of the mother' - meaning that if our government ever legislated on it, we would have abortion-on-demand by the back door.

[Irish_Thatcherite]

Thanks - that helps with the ongoing debate on this thread! :)

[Cicero]

I think you misunderstood me. Sometimes women have miscarriages, and nothing can be done about it. It just happens, and it's too late to do anything.

Naturally if a miscarriage can be prevented, it should be.

[UpAllNight]

--If that is true, then it's by natural causes.--

Then we are just following nature.

[CharlesWayneCT]

Isn't the official position of the church that embryos cannot be fertilized and frozen like this, because most of them never DO get implanted and therefore they are virtually "killed", even if they might happen to exist in a frozen state until they become non-viable?

[NYer]

Isn't the official position of the church that embryos cannot be fertilized and frozen like this, because most of them never DO get implanted and therefore they are virtually "killed", even if they might happen to exist in a frozen state until they become non-viable?

Yes.

Neither is it valid to argue, as a justification for sexual intercourse which is deliberately contraceptive, that a lesser evil is to be preferred to a greater one, or that such intercourse would merge with procreative acts of past and future to form a single entity, and so be qualified by exactly the same moral goodness as these. Though it is true that sometimes it is lawful to tolerate a lesser moral evil in order to avoid a greater evil or in order to promote a greater good," it is never lawful, even for the gravest reasons, to do evil that good may come of it (18)—in other words, to intend directly something which of its very nature contradicts the moral order, and which must therefore be judged unworthy of man, even though the intention is to protect or promote the welfare of an individual, of a family or of society in general. Consequently, it is a serious error to think that a whole married life of otherwise normal relations can justify sexual intercourse which is deliberately contraceptive and so intrinsically wrong

HUMANAE VITAE

[sarasmom]

"Naturally if a miscarriage can be prevented, it should be."

The reason many women in the USA will never support any attempt at overturning Roe v Wade.

Scientists and politicians have created a horrible Catch 22 situation.
On the one side, of the extremist pro-life position, it seems logical to assume that at some point, a fertile adult female might be punished/prosecuted for having a normal menstrual cycle and "murdering" a perfectly viable egg.

OTOH, of the extremist pro-abortion position, a fertile adult female might actually be punished/prosecuted for birthing a "less than perfectly healthy" infant, and/or conversely have her ovaries forcibly removed by government orders, if DNA suggests her "eggs" would be helpfull in scientific research...

The "slippery slope" is what all of us are currently enjoying.

Neither extremes are willing to remember that females are actually full human beings,entirely deserving of all the rights, respect, duties, and responsibilities of any male human being.

But having personally endured five miscarriages, all medically termed as "spontaneous abortions", I am personally adamently against "elective" abortion. I am also "against" the harvesting of female ovarian eggs, in-vitriol fertilisation,

[metmom]

It's practically impossible to try to procreate naturally without having a fertilized eggs die.

So what? Everybody dies some time or another; some younger, some older. What are you going to do; equate death by natural causes the same as murder?

[metmom]

So it is OK for nature to kill, and you should do nothing about it?

What an idiotic question. Supposing *nature* did kill, which is can't because nature isn't even a thing,;what WOULD you do about it? Try it for murder? Sue it? How about get a grip.

[metmom]

ping

[metmom]

Even if it is one week. Even if it is a little ball of cells, or even one cell.

Another stupid scenario. Women don't even know they're pregnant at that stage, and if the egg doesn't implant, she'll never know.