Frozen embryo row rocks Ireland  DUBLIN - The Associated Press

  A judge ruled on Tuesday that a Dublin man has never given his consent for his estranged wife to use the couple’s frozen embryos, a verdict that opens up a wider legal battle over whether fertilized human eggs should enjoy a constitutionally protected right to life. High Court Justice Brian McGovern ruled that the man — who signed a contract at a Dublin in-vitro fertilization clinic in 2002 permitting three of the couple’s fertilized eggs to be placed inside his wife, three others to be placed in cold storage in event of failure — had not authorized his wife to use the frozen eggs for future IVF treatments. “I hold that there was no agreement, either expressed or implied, as to what was to be done with the frozen embryos in the circumstances that have arisen,” McGovern said. The judge criticized as vague and inadequate the different contracts signed by the man and woman at the Sims International Fertility Clinic. The next stage of the case was scheduled to begin Thursday, but it isn’t expected to conclude until the autumn.