Date of Publication :19th October 2023

Abstract: Termination of pregnancy for severe fetal anomalies is ethically challenging in today’s society. Ethical dilemmas such as women’s autonomy rights may conflict with fetus right to personhood and doctor’s obligations to the society. Births of severely disabled babies create conflicts among the parents which lead to complicacy between them. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the moral status of the fetus and second in determining the importance of fetus or its women’s right on her body. Abortion is generally defined in terms of viability of a fetus. Having seen from the side of society that the entire society can never agree on abortion, it is forced to have to moral status of the fetus and to give less importance to the women’s right over her body. But we cannot completely exclude women as the main moral agent and concentrate on the fetus separately. There will always be great debate whether or not abortion is right or wrong or moral. Everyone will have their own opinions and justification for why they feel abortion should be legal or illegal, moral or immoral. Thus, Utilitarianism aims to have the greatest amount of happiness and least amount of pain, at the highest quality for the greatest of people.

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