A rather interesting column from the Times (UK) on the decision confronting a High Court in Ireland on what to do with some frozen embryos.

It’s more honest than most treatments of the issue you’ll find here, although not every word the writer says will be to everyone’s liking – she insists that because pregancy begins at implantation, that’s when life begins – but then she realizes, and says out loud that as logical as this is, it doesn’t square with our emotions and sensibilities, our else we could toss the embryos without a second thought. But we don’t. And then this:

I know this means that the unfortunate embryos in storage in Rathgar cannot be considered life, and it is most unpleasant that science has presented us with these horrible decisions. It does make one feel a tad sympathetic to the Catholic church’s position that messing with eggs and sperms in laboratories is a bad idea, regardless of how badly people want a baby. Since IVF is a miserable, painful, expensive procedure with a huge failure rate (over 80%) anyway, maybe it would be easier just to forget about the whole business and tell childless couples to adopt. But since science can, then we do, regardless of whether we should.