The complexity of the debate on the legal status of the “nasciturus” nowadays and the need of the concept of “unborn person”

Abstract

This research deals with the theoretical and legal problem of framing the current issues of the Statute of the “unborn child” (“nasciturus”) between legal and bioethics discourse. The proposal is to recognize the current viability of the concept of “unborn person”2** that the Brazilian jurist Augusto Teixeira de Freitas established on his Outline of the Civil Code, the first Brazilian project of Civil Code in the mid-nineteenth century, and which was used by Dalmacio Vélez Sarsfield in the Argentine project of Civil Code, that was approved on September 29, 1869, and it is still in force. Three topics are treated: first, the presentation of the key problem, talking about the current debate on the rights of the “nasciturus”, especially when linked to bioethics, secondly, exposure regarding insufficient reasons for the current legal regulation on the matter, and thirdly, the presentation of the proposal of the concept of “unborn person”. From these elements, the need to resume the study of the concept of “unborn person” will be defended, in accordance with the thinking of its creator, Teixeira de Freitas.