Introduction

Abstract

Perhaps no question in bioethics has been more vehemently contested than the moral status of human embryos and fetuses. Originally, this question primarily related to the ethical permissibility of deliberately procured abortion, particularly leading up and in response to the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton decisions in 1973 that legalized the provision of abortion services. In these decisions, the Court explicitly avoided addressing the question of whether an embryo or fetus counts as a constitutionally protected “person” who enjoys an inalienable right to life. Nevertheless, the Court acknowledged the diversity of philosophical and religious views on this question, as well as that the “potentiality of human life” possessed by embryos and fetuses merits a degree of legal protection. As a result, the Court affirmed the legal permissibility of abortion within the first trimester of pregnancy, allowed for state-level restrictions of abortion during the second trimester if the mother’s health is implicated, and allowed for a greater degree of state-level restrictions during the third trimester in order to protect “potential life.”