The sick fetus: an example of gradual entry of the principle of vulnerability in bioethics
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Abstract
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 principle has 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 beoffered to the parents of the baby: they are a different class of vulnerable persons with whom we feel a human solidarity.
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