Who Owns the Fetus?: Fetal Ownership and Subjects of Harm in Abortion

This thesis poses the argument that abortion is morally impermissible because it causes harm to the embryo/fetus. To defend this, the author argues that the pre-conscious fetus has a level of moral status that warrants protection of its life, even if it is not yet considered a person. She uses the philosophical accounts of personhood and moral status offered by philosophers Bertha Manninen, Don Marquis, and Jack Mulder to situate her own arguments. The author devises a new harm principle to contend that the pre-conscious fetus can be a subject of harm. She then uses this harm principle to argue that the future person can also be a subject of harm and to argue that the pre-conscious fetus necessarily belongs to the future person. The underlying postulation of the thesis is that the pre-conscious fetus and the future person are related such that they cannot be separated in any way that is of moral significance. The person and the body are intrinsically and inextricably tied. The thesis contends that the pre-conscious fetus cannot exist without anticipating the existence of a future person and that it is thus in the fetus’s human nature to become a person. Because the fetus has a valuable future as a person, the thesis concludes that the fetus has a level of moral status equal to that of a person.