The moral status of the near-term fetus.

Abstract

Continuing a dialogue begun in an earlier issue of the Journal of Medical Ethics (1988 Mar; 14(1): 3-4, 18-24), the authors reaffirm their position that third trimester fetuses should be given the same moral status as persons, and respond to Gillon's criticism that their view would not permit killing the fetus to save the mother. They argue that newborns possess the moral and legal status of persons because of their participation in a matrix of social interaction with others; this social role develops over time, beginning prior to birth at the borderline of viability. Killing a near-term fetus if this produces a benefit, even a minor one, for persons is unacceptable, but according the fetus the same moral status as persons does not preclude the possibility of killing the fetus in a situation morally analogous to self-defense.The difficult issue of balancing maternal and fetal interests in obstetric decision-making was discussed in an earlier article. Dr. Raanan Gillon challenged the view that newborn infants are and should be regarded as having the same moral status as persons; moreover, there is no morally relevant difference between infants and fetuses in the weight range in question, and as an alternative he suggested that fetuses have an attenuated moral status compared to persons, to the point that it is permissible to kill them when doing so benefits persons. In reply there are several considerations such as other moral intuitions about infants and fetuses near term. When a philosophical theory, such as: infants should not be regarded as having the same moral status as persons because they are not self-conscious conflicts with widespread intuitions, such as: most obstetricians would consider fetuses near term to have a moral status that is close to, if not equal to, that of newborns, then we should carefully consider whether the theory is strong enough to override those intuitions.