Prenatal medicine and the individual: Notes from a realistic bioethical perspective

Abstract

A bioethical vision is exposed on the personal condition of the human embryo, based on its ontological reality. The human condition of the individual is affirmed as intrinsically worthy, noble, from the very beginning of its existence or biographical wandering as a zygote. Furthermore, in a critical way, a discussion is set out about some utilitarian-materialistic ideas used to deny the personal condition of the human embryo through the assignation of “extrinsic” and arbitrary criteria for dignity: age, development period, as well as the will of the mother or third parties, clinical, anatomic or physiological conditions, legislative decisions, and other kind of determinations. Likewise, attention is drawn on how in the current medical obstetric practice the ontological aspects of the individual condition of every human being as a person are being denied due to pressures of utilitarian nature. There is an “explicit” as well as a “tacit” negation of the personal reality of the unborn. It is affirmed that respect owed to the human being as a person since its very beginning - as deserved by any born/grown member of the human species - is due to reasons of “intrinsic” nature that are inherent to each particular individual condition, with no discrimination whatsoever, within the concept of the “teleological autonomy” of the human embryo.