UNBORN children can be thankful for the "silly season". Otherwise their cause might not have received the intense media scrutiny of the past few weeks, including the recent controversy over the possibility of embryo freezing procedures here in Ireland.

It would have been a major tragedy if these issues had not received wide coverage, because the treatment of unborn human life, from its earliest stage, is the key human rights issue facing western society today.

We in Ireland are at least more sensitised to the ethical issues surrounding unborn life, thanks to the concerns of pro life groupings in the 1970s and 1980s. Their success in putting abortion on the national agenda preempted, and for to years resisted, attempts to bring about an abortion facility in Ireland.

But while the focus then was on abortion of an established pregnancy, the attention now is shifting towards life at its earliest stages, fertility treatment, the creation of "spare" embryos, the handling of these and, the treatment of multiple pregnancies.

Because of the events of the past 15 years, we in Ireland are among the best educated people in the world on this issue. Rather than caving in, however, to an international consensus which denigrates the value of human life, we should move confidently to educate the western world to the importance of valuing all human life, both born and unborn. This is essential for the preservation of our common humanity in the long term.

Those who oppose abortion, for example those who recoiled at the recent killing of a twin child in Queen Charlotte's Hospital, London, must necessarily be worried about the more dangerous excesses of modern science in relation to human reproduction.

The Queen Charlotte's case, which centred on a child who lived and its sibling who died, really did no more than underline the starkness of the choice of death over life that accompanies all abortion.

But we must remember that this state of civilisation came about because, somewhere along the line, somebody abandoned the principle that all human life is sacred. Once you go down this road, there is no longer any serious intellectual barrier to the most widespread of abortion scenarios. "Embryonic", "handicapped" and "unwanted female child" are merely elements in a continuum, with no compelling reason to distinguish between them.

The advances of science strengthen the case for respecting "the embryo, by pointing out the individuality of each, with its unique genetic code of human characteristics. But the scientists, at least those working in the areas of pre natal genetic testing, in vitro fertilisation and embryo freezing, have been slow to vindicate the individual dignity of the embryo.

There are many possible reasons for this: there may be a lot of money at stake or scientists may not wish to have their field of experimentation limited. Perhaps, like many others, they have become slaves to the "non judgmental" culture so prevalent here, where the slightest whiff of a morality which circumvents is anathema to the establishment.

THIS establishment includes those politicians in Ireland who have made names for themselves fighting for "civil liberties" but who have been silent in recent weeks.

It includes the Minister for Health who last year gave us the kind of abortion referral that would make it possible to dispose of an Irish twin in Queen Charlotte's Hospital and who, so far, has been slow to assert the Christian Democratic credentials of his party in relation to unborn human life.

The present Government must honour the clear public consensus against abortion by bringing forward a new constitutional referendum on the issue. This is the only way to allow people to say the complete "no" to abortion that is necessary to prevent future nightmare scenarios, such as we have witnessed in the US, Britain and Europe.

Recent days have seen calls in the media for legislation to govern practices concerning human embryos, but these calls have failed to be specific about what is needed.

The guiding principle must be that fertility related practices are not permissible if they create embryonic human beings that will not be nurtured and brought to birth. Certain benefits that science has brought may need to be put on hold or modified until they are fully harmonious with total respect for all human life.

What of our friends and relations who have difficulty in conceiving a child, and who look to science's limited ability to make this happen in some circumstances? There are grounds for hope here. Science, developing in harmony with a respect for life, has refined natural reproduction technologies with success rates comparable to IVF.

But we also need to look again at adoption, with all its faults, and wonder at the individualistic society which sees 5,000 Irish abortions annually while Irish couples cannot find a child to adopt and love. We have read of their journeys to China and Romania to adopt, but wouldn't it be better if those lost Irish children also found happy homes here?

Perhaps it is time, and the churches could play a key role here, to embark on a programme in schools designed to promote the dignity of life from its earliest stages and to focus on the generosity that can accompany the giving of a child to loving adoptive parents when the thought of parenthood cannot be borne.

It is ironic that, in the western world, close scrutiny is given to prospective parents. This is a good tendency. It is called child centredness. Yet, in jurisdictions outside Ireland, any kind of higgledy piggledy family arrangements would seem to suffice for fertility treatment, as we have seen from the Mandy Altwood octuplets case. That is not child centredness.