Feminist Bioethics

Historical Background of Bioethics

The modern field of bioethics developed in the early 1970s. Though its contemporary social movements include second-wave feminism and the civil rights movement, bioethics shares only one basic, though extremely important, tenet with these other movements: that social amelioration is necessary for humans to live lives full of dignity. Before the 1970s, bioethics was known as medical ethics and as such, was far more limited in its scope. The shift from traditional medical ethics to bioethics is usually attributed to three events: global public outcry against the horrors of the Nazi doctors' medical and scientific experimentations on Jews that were publicized during the [Page 303]Nuremburg Trials, the scandalous syphilis experiments on black men at the Tuskegee Institute, and fantastical scientific innovations in what would become known as the fields of molecular genetics and biotechnology. Bioethics was vastly different from medical ethics in that it was a space for critical inquiry into the juxtapositions between medical and scientific advances and the need for improved quality of human life. Hence, bioethicists, then and now, address often-difficult questions that pit the needs of patients against the needs of doctors, health care organizations, health insurance companies, and those who would advocate medical and scientific innovations. Examples of these questions include the following: Should those persons without health insurance receive the same quality of care as persons with health insurance? Do local and national governments have the right to mandate vaccinations for school-age children? Do terminally ill patients have the right to choose death over treatment?

The Field of Feminist Bioethics

According to noted scholar Mary C. Rawlinson, feminist bioethics is a field of both study and practice that places women's rights and needs at the center of its ethical discussions and decision making. Thus, feminist bioethics critiques bioethics for ignoring the specific needs of women. This happens because bioethics considers men to be the universal subject of inquiry. Feminist bioethicists have argued that because men are the benchmarks for which to pursue ethics in health, medicine, and science, women are rendered invisible, at best, and pathological, at worst. Much of feminist bioethics scholarship has been concerned with revealing how such gender biases structure the overall health care system. Specifically, using men as the universal subject translates into outcomes such as clinical trials that use only males as subjects and little to no research on women's experiences of major illnesses (i.e., cancer, heart disease). Critiquing the use of men as universal and allegedly neutral proxies for humans is not new to feminism. Simone de Beauvoir referred to this as a process of “otherization” with men at the center and women as the “second sex.”

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