When a fetal condition poses no health threat to the mother, caring for the fetal patient will always carry some degree of risk to the mother, without direct therapeutic benefit for her. Because the patients are biologically linked, both, or neither, must be treated alike. It would be unethical to recommend fetal therapy as if it were medically indicated for both patients. Still, given a recommendation for fetal therapy, pregnant women, in most cases, will consent to treatment which promotes fetal health. When pregnant women refuse therapy, physicians must remember that the ethical injunction against harming one patient in order to benefit another is virtually absolute.
Viability is the physical capacity for life independent of maternal corporeal support.
They argue that newborns and fetuses participate in the social matrix, and that this social role develops over time, beginning prior to birth. Others note that it is impossible to treat fetuses as persons without treating pregnant women as if they were less than persons. The birth of the fetus results in a distinct patient towards whom medical therapy can be individually directed. As such, many believe that the moral status of a developmentally younger newborn supersedes that of an older viable fetus. People have rights.