"The Sanctity of Life": An Analysis of a Concept

Abstract

The concept of the sanctity of life has been frequently appealed to but seldom examined. In much of biomedical ethics it is treated as a basic principle. This article is an attempt to discover what this pivotal concept means and to see if it can do the conceptual job in biomedical ethics it purports to do. The concept is found to be impossibly vague and misleading. It can be replaced to advantage by other well-established concepts.