%0 Journal Article
%T Fetus as Human Being: Where is the Cut-off Point?
%A Soroush Dabbagh
%J Journal of Medical Ethics and History of Medicine
%D 2009
%I 
%X Abortion is one of the controversial issues discussed in medical ethics. We can formulatethe argument which is put forward by the opponents of abortion as follows: 1) fetus hasto 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 inaborting is morally wrong.In this paper, I am going to argue that the proponents¡¯ argument with regard to theimplausibility of categorizing fetus as human being is unjustified and wanting. In otherwords, 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 hornof 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 semanticstory which needs to be expressed by the proponents with regard to the cut-off point ofthe concept ¡®personhood¡¯. Otherwise, the first premise will not be convincing if raised infavour of the plausibility of committing abortion.
%K Abortion
%K Fetus
%K human
%U http://journals.tums.ac.ir/upload_files/pdf/12792.pdf