Fetuses, newborns, & parental responsibility

Area of Science:

• Bioethics
• Moral Philosophy
• Reproductive Ethics

Background:

• The moral status of fetuses and newborns is a persistent debate in bioethics.
• Existing accounts often struggle to consistently differentiate the moral permissibility of abortion and infanticide.

Purpose of the Study:

• To defend a relational account of the moral status difference between fetuses and newborns.
• To establish a framework that reconciles the moral permissibility of abortion with the impermissibility of infanticide.

Main Methods:

• Conceptual analysis of 'parent' and 'child' roles.
• Examination of 'parental responsibility' as a moral dimension of the parent-child relation.
• Application of the relational account to the moral status of fetuses and newborns.

Main Results:

• Newborns, but not fetuses, are proper objects of parental responsibility due to the existing parent-child relation.
• This relational difference in moral status is key to distinguishing the moral permissibility of abortion from infanticide.

Conclusions:

• The relational account provides a consistent ethical basis for permitting abortion while prohibiting infanticide.
• This approach resolves a key tension in reproductive and neonatal ethics.