A High Court judge is today expected to announce how he will handle the private and public aspects of the case involving the fate of three frozen embryos.
Yesterday, Mr Justice McGovern heard how the legal action by a woman for orders directing the implantation in her womb of three frozen embryos that were fertilised with her estranged husband's sperm four years ago raises "novel and momentous questions", including the question of when human life begins.
If the court finds the frozen embryos are "unborn" within the meaning of Article 40.3 of the Constitution - the "right to life" amendment passed by referendum in 1983 - then the court must vindicate the right to life of those embryos, Mr Gerard Hogan SC, for the woman (38), a mother of two, said.
Mr Justice McGovern is expected to tell the two parties, the parents of the embryos, whether he will decide first on the issue of the nature of their contract with the fertility clinic without hearing arguments on the constitutional issues.
Counsel for the Attorney General Donal O'Donnell SC said that the Attorney General was a notice party to what had started as a matter of private, contractual law.
The court should avoid entering upon a constitutional issue if it was possible to do so, and should hear evidence of a non-constitutional nature first.
If the constitutional issues were decided, this could have significant impact on other couples seeking fertility treatment, and on people using certain forms of contraception, who were not represented in the proceedings, he said.
Counsel for the husband, John Rogers SC, agreed on the need to decide the contractual issue first. The questions were whether there was consent, what the consent was to, could it be withdrawn, and was it withdrawn.