The sick fetus: an example of gradual entering of the vulnerability principle, into bioethics
- Autores: Lourdes Velázquez
- Localización: Medicina y Ética: Revista internacional de bioética, deontología y ética médica, ISSN-e 2594-2166, ISSN 0188-5022, Vol. 30, Nº. 1 (enero-marzo/January-March), 2019, págs. 107-119
- Idioma: inglés
- Títulos paralelos:
- El feto enfermo: un ejemplo del ingreso gradual del principio de vulnerabilidad en la bioética
- Enlaces
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Resumen
The “principle of vulnerability” is among the most important novelties recently introduced in bioethics, strongly stressed in the “Barcelona Declaration”. According to this principle, the condition of vulnerability of a certain entity entails the moral duty of giving it protection. The aim of this paper is that of showing how this principlehas gradually entered bioethics, and also of studying a concrete example, that is, the care of the sick fetus and of the terminal newborn child. On one hand, the care for the sick fetus can be seen as a protection of a vulnerable being but, on the other hand, this fragility does not seem sufficient for justifying a protection for something that cannot have a benefit from it. This because not everything that is vulnerable or fragile deserves protection. The ethical and legal duty of protections comes from the fact that the fragile entity has an intrinsic value. In the case of the incurable fetus this value consists in its being a human person, and also when it is a terminal newborn this condition remains intact, since in all cases this is a human “person” endowed as such with an intrinsic “dignity”. The same discourse applies to the care that must be offered to the parents of the baby: they are a different class of vulnerable persons with whom we feel a human solidarity.
