Journal of Medical Ethics and History of Medicine Fetus as Human Being:  Where is the Cut‐off Point?

Abortion is one of the controversial issues discussed in medical ethics. We can formulate the argument which is put forward by the opponents of abortion as follows: 1) fetus has to be regarded as human being; 2) killing an innocent human being is morally wrong; 3) aborting is an example of killing and terminating a human being’s life. So, being engaged in aborting is morally wrong. In this paper, I am going to argue that the proponents ’ argument with regard to the implausibility of categorizing fetus as human being is unjustified and wanting. In other words, the way in which the proponents of abortion talk about the idea of personhood is, inadequate and vague, semantically speaking. The outline of the argument is as follows. The proponents of abortion are confronted with a dilemma. According to the first horn of the dilemma, the proponents have to subscribe to infanticide which is morally wrong, intuitively speaking. According to the second horn of the dilemma, there is a semantic story which needs to be expressed by the proponents with regard to the cut-off point of the concept ‘personhood’. Otherwise, the first premise will not be convincing if raised in favour of the plausibility of committing abortion