Everyone must play their part to ensure we achieve legislation to protect human embryos in Ireland

A massive international propaganda machine is already campaigning effectively for legislation to allow research involving the deliberate destruction of human embryos.

In Ireland, two State-supported bodies have already issued reports supporting the deliberate destruction of human embryos, the Commission on Assisted Human Reproduction and the Irish Council for Bioethics.

At EU-level the replacement of animal testing with testing of pharmaceutical products on human embryos has already been discussed.

In 1983, the Irish people voted in a referendum for Article 40.3.3 to protect the unborn but in 2009 the Supreme Court ruled that frozen human embryos in IVF clinics are not ‘unborn’. So the same embryo whose right to life is protected under our Constitution in the womb can be deliberately destroyed the day before in the clinic because, the Supreme Court has decided, its right to life is not protected as long as it is in a clinic or laboratory.

What’s to be done, then, now that the Supreme Court has decided that there is no legal protection for the right to life of human embryos in laboratories and clinics? It’s not rocket science – we have to bring in legislation to protect them. This is quite literally a matter of life and death so we need to impress on our politicians that for us, democracy means equality for all, even human beings in the first days of their lives who find themselves in clinics or laboratories through no choice of theirs. We need to inform our elected representatives as well that we will use or withhold our vote in the next election depending on the stances of individual parties and candidates regarding protection for early human life.

To view the Pro-Life Campaign press release on the R v R decision, click here