engleski

When does a fetus become a person?

One of the most controversial questions in modern medicine, bioethics and science is dilemma about the fetus being a person. To discuss that question one must first define personality. The list of necessary conditions for being a person includes features like intelligence, self awareness, self control etc. The infrastructures of those abilities reside in the cortex that is well developed from the 30th week of gestation. From that point of view, every neonate or fetus during the third trimester of gestation is a person, in a moral and ethical context. On the other hand, legal capacity is the ability of a natural person to enjoy rights and obligations. The human being becomes a natural person at the moment of birth. If human life is worth being protected by law only after delivery, for what reason does perinatology exist and perinatologists fight for? Lots of medical treatments, interventions and even surgeries during pregnancy are done for the benefit of the unborn, and not due to the mother's health. From the legal perspective, it is better for a child to be born prematurely than at the right time, since from the moment of birth the child's life is protected by law. From the medical point of view, this must seem absurd, as the best environment for a child to develop is the mother's womb during all nine months of the pregnancy. All the known evidence support the human fetus being a true ontological human individual and consequently a human person in fact if not in law.

beginning of human life; ethics; personality; legal protection; birth

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