A legal victory for the woman at the centre of the frozen embryos case would place her estranged husband at risk of becoming the father of triplets although he has said he wants no more children, the woman agreed in court yesterday.
"I want to have the babies even if they are three," she said. "Time isn't on my side."
Breaking down in evidence, she also said her world "fell apart" when marital difficulties arose. "I was in love with the man, I went through IVF treatment to have his children . . . I'd have done anything for him."
Asked should her husband not have a say about the possibility of becoming the father of triplets, the woman said he had signed a contract with a Dublin clinic in early 2002 under the terms of which he accepted he would become the legal father of any "resulting child" from what she understood to be the in vitro fertilisation (IVF) process.
She regarded a "child" and an "embryo" as meaning the same thing and that an embryo "is the start of human life". "It's his sperm, he's the father of these embryos."
She agreed he had said he wanted no more children after 40 and said she had "taken on his views".
She added: "We still have to decide what to do with the embryos - they do have a right to life. They can't be destroyed. I thought long and hard about donating but I just can't give our children away to another couple." She couldn't destroy them as she believed it would be "ethically and morally wrong".
She agreed that her husband's expressed desire to donate the embryos to others and not to have her use them was consistent with her own views that the embryos had a right to life.
She had been medically advised the risk of having triplets was slim, she said.
She was being cross-examined by John Rogers SC, for her estranged husband, in her continuing action for an order to have three frozen embryos, now in storage in a Dublin clinic, implanted in her uterus.
The woman agreed that when undergoing IVF treatment in early 2002, she and her husband had concerns that the implantation of three embryos in her uterus could result in triplets and that she had asked whether fewer than three embryos might be implanted.
On being advised by the clinic that it was its policy to implant three to improve the chance of pregnancy, they had agreed to the three being implanted. That resulted in her successfully giving birth to a daughter in September 2002.
Mr Rogers suggested to the woman that the document signed by her husband on January 29th, 2002, was not a consent to the implantation of the embryos in her but related solely to IVF treatment.
She said he had given his consent to her undergoing IVF treatment and to his becoming the legal father of any resulting child and she understood he could not withdraw that consent at any time in the future.