Organizers’ Note: FAB in Qatar 2024

Readers of the IJFAB blog will be aware that the 2024 FAB conference has been facing some unprecedented difficulties. A bit of background:  Because FAB arose out of a special interest group on feminist bioethics within IAB, for many years now, it has held its own conference in association with the World Congress. Naturally, this means that the FAB conference is held in the same location as the WCB. In 2022, the International Association of Bioethics agreed to hold the 17th World Congress of Bioethics in Doha, Qatar.  This was done without consulting the leadership of FAB. 

The choice of Qatar as host country has prompted some strong reactions and concerns among bioethicists, some of whom have argued, for example, that a bioethics congress should not be held in a country with such a poor record on human rights, women’s rights, and the rights of migrant labor. Others have been concerned about the environmental impact both of the venue itself, and of so many bioethicists flying to Qatar to attend. FAB was, and is, particularly sensitive to concerns about giving support to a regime in which women are denied equal civil status. The question of whether FAB should go ahead with holding its conference alongside the WCB in Qatar was discussed at an Extraordinary General Meeting called in 2022. Here, the debate centered on the question of whether the best way to engage with Qatar’s stance on these important issues was to boycott the conference, or alternatively to discuss these questions openly in Doha.  It is worth noting that we sought (and received) a guarantee that the conference would have full academic freedom, i.e., the ability to discuss any topic we wanted to. The democratic vote of the FAB membership was in favor of continuing to plan for a FAB gathering in Doha on 2-3 June 2024.

One key set of concerns expressed by many bioethicists, including FAB members, is Qatar’s record on discrimination against gay, lesbian, transgender, and genderqueer people, in law and in practice. Some FAB members have expressed concerns about their own safety if they were to attend the conference in Qatar. The organizers of the WCB, and we two as organizers of the FAB conference, were given reassurances by the Qatari organizing committee that LGBTQI+ attendees would be safe within the area of the conference itself.  However, the organizers were unable to give similar reassurances about conference attendees venturing outside into Doha or elsewhere.

Many of you by now will be aware that in late February, a British-Mexican gay man was arrested after what appears to have been a catfishing operation by the Qatari police on the Grindr app. According to his family, Manuel Guerrero Aviña is being held in prison without access to the anti-HIV medication he needs. This is far from the first such case, and exemplifies Qatar’s attitude to LGBTQI+ lives. Although not all the facts of this story are yet available, it has raised the question for both IAB and FAB of an appropriate response.  Given that the conference is just three months away, and that – as we had hoped – many women academics from the region have had abstracts accepted, we as FAB co-coordinators believe it is more appropriate to continue with the conference. However, we also appreciate that following this arrest (and the longstanding pattern of harassment of LGBTQI+ people), some of our membership may at this point choose to withdraw, or not to register. 

We are also aware that many people with accepted abstracts have not yet registered for the FAB conference. We understand that people are likely to feel very ambivalent at the moment. This creates both practical and ethical difficulties for us, as organizers of the conference. Put very practically: if you are in fact intending to be at the conference, whether in person or online, please do register NOW so that we have a better idea of the numbers we are planning for, and how to best organize time zones for those attending online. If you have decided not to attend because of concerns about the choice of host country, we understand this comes at a cost to you. As co-coordinators of FAB, we continue to support all our membership, whichever decision they make.  We welcome your comments here in the blog, or via email. 

Best regards,

Jackie and Anna
FAB co-chairs

Share Button

Feminist Bioethics Scholar Spotlight: Desiree Valentine

For our first in our new Feminist Bioethics Scholar Spotlight Series we are thrilled to feature Desiree Valentine, PhD, who is currently an Assistant Professor in the philosophy department at Marquette University. Read on to learn more about Desiree, her work, and her interests, in this interview. Also please nominate scholars you would like to learn more about to be interviewed for the blog!

To start: what drew you to bioethics? What is your bioethics origin story?

In 2014, I was part of the first cohort of Ph.D. students to participate in a 3-week intensive summer workshop at UPenn to learn about bioethics as a field and integrate it into our doctoral work. My work had always been interdisciplinary with a focus on critical philosophy of race, queer theory, and feminist philosophy, but this was a chance for me to engage with issues related to social determinants of health, healthcare systems, histories of medical research, assisted reproductive technologies, race-based medicine, disability, and more. I found this to be really exciting and timely work that had many repercussions for the concepts I was studying and developing within critical philosophy of race.

Flash forwards a couple months. Garnering much attention in the news at the time was the story of a white lesbian mother who purchased and was then inseminated with the wrong donor sperm—she had chosen sperm from a white donor and received sperm from a black donor. She subsequently became pregnant, learned halfway through the pregnancy of the mishap, and gave birth to a healthy mixed-race child. The woman decided to sue the sperm bank for breach of warranty but also for wrongful birth. The story was sensationalized especially due to the second legal claim. Wrongful birth is a specialized type of tort-based negligence claim that implicitly assumes a parent would have terminated a pregnancy if they had been rightfully made aware of certain risks. These ‘risks’ of course have historically been related to potential birth anomalies, disabilities, or other thought to be medically pressing issues. But here was the case of a mother claiming that race itself was reason to declare a birth and the existence of her now child as wrongful.

Many news commentators claimed that the parents should simply be happy that they had a healthy child and that it was racist for them to claim specific harms had been leveraged against them because they had a nonwhite child. This claim seemed fairly uncontroversial, but it was only one part of the story I thought. What was of particular interest to me was the history of wrongful birth as a legal claim. It was steeped in disability-related eugenic impulses. That is, it assumed that the birth of a child with a disability could be an inherent “wrong” and something for which damages could be awarded. Media coverage seemed to elide this history and when it was brought up, it only served to heighten the racial offense of the case.  To liken race to disability was thought to be repulsive, not because both relied on eugenic logics in this case, but because it was unfair to make nonwhite racialization an inherent ‘bad,’ like disability.

What this case suggested, however, and what I went on to argue in various pieces was that we needed to historicize the relation between race and disability and understand how both have been subject to eugenic-minded constitution via harmful comparative mechanisms that helped justify oppressive practices and systems of inequity. What is needed is a way of understanding the history and politics of race and disability not through mutual distancing tactics, but a renewed attention to their co-constitution. In effect, my hope was that in developing what I called a political ontology of race and disability, we could forge more resistant solidarities between racial and disability justice. 

So this is the legal case and controversy that began my interest in critical disability studies especially as it relates to critical philosophy of race. Central here was the issue of reproductive politics and ethics, especially as it relates to assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs). I’ve subsequently published more broadly on ARTs and their relation to race, disability, kinship, and the notions of ‘choice’ and ‘risk’ in prenatal testing, diagnosis, and potential termination of a fetus.

What next directions in your research are you most excited about?

My work on race and reproduction has brought me to engage with the framework of reproductive justice (RJ). RJ offers a radical shift in understanding the breadth and depth of reproductive oppression. RJ was inspired by the movement of women of color feminists concerned with reproductive rights and protections beyond abortion—so, for example, the right to have children and not be forcibly sterilized and the right to raise children in healthy and secure environments without the threat of family separation or unsafe living arrangements. The history of the U.S. is filled with reproductive atrocities and oppressions leveled at black, brown, and indigenous women and families, which is so often left out of the conversation about reproductive rights, justice, and healthcare. This history is not past. It inflects policies and procedures of governmental control (consider here family separation tactics at the border). It inflects statistics related to high maternal and infant mortality rates for racialized individuals. It impacts economic and welfare policies related to family support, safety regulations regarding toxic environments (think here of lead pipes or industrial toxicities in black and brown neighborhoods).

Reproductive justice therefore requires broadscale infrastructural type justice. It involves healing, repair, and structural and economic supports. In my current and upcoming research, I am committed to bringing this history and present of reproductive oppression and the framework of RJ to bear on conversations regarding reparations in the U.S. There has been a resurgence of discourse on reparations over the past ten years, beginning with Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Atlantic article, “The Case for Reparations.” Several local reparations programs have been spearheaded throughout the country and the question of reparations was central to the 2020 democratic primary and presidential election. These conversations about reparations remain primarily tied to the wealth and labor extraction enacted during slavery, but as I argue in my work, reproductive labor and violence was central to the institution of slavery and because of this we need a renewed discussion of reparations as it relates to the harms of reproductive slavery.

Last year, I published the piece “Reproductive Justice as Reparative Justice,” and coming out this year will be a piece titled “Reparations for Reproductive Slavery and Its Afterlives.” I hope these pieces and future work brings to the public the idea that reparations for racial slavery in the U.S. need to be rethought with specific attention to the reproductive atrocities of slavery and its afterlife. Forms of intergenerational trauma related to the sexual and reproductive violences of slavery abound and we must use this knowledge to deepen our understanding of what “reproduction” entails—both socially and biologically— as well as available routes to racial repair. Reparations discourse must be reproductively-minded and vice versa. This approach challenges fundamental assumptions about both reparative justice (as primarily backward-looking) and reproductive justice (as primarily pertaining to the individual and biological).  

What favorite thing(s) can you share with us that you do when not doing bioethics?

I enjoy spending time with my family and friends exploring new places. I love taking walks in areas new to me and finding great restaurants, bars, and coffee shops. I dig minimalist coffee shop vibes as well as outdoor eateries. Being a Wisconsin resident, I especially love a good beer garden.

Also, while I love cityscapes, I also worship the great lakes (shout out to Lake Michigan in particular). I love the expanse of Chicago’s and Milwaukee’s lakefronts and enjoy taking a peaceful walk next to crashing waves.

(Photo credit: Desiree Valentine)

What’s something published in the last few years that you’re excited about or found really helpful?

I’d love to hype the work of legal scholar Khiara M. Bridges who works on issues related to race, class, reproduction, and health/care. Her 2022 piece “The Dysgenic State: Environmental Injustice and Disability-Selective Abortion Bans” details how present-day operations of abortion bans and the state of reproductive healthcare for black women coalesce to generate a new or different type of eugenics that demands attention. Bridges identifies this as the dysgenic state. This is the state that “compels its citizens to give birth to children whose health has been impaired by environmental toxins from which the state has not protected them” (329).

Given the rollbacks on federal abortion protections for poor and disproportionately black and brown women starting with the Hyde Amendment and continuing through the Dobbs decision today and given various environmental harms—both physical and social—impacting racialized populations, it is imperative that we attend to the reproductive impacts on black and brown women and families levied by the state. We must situate this over the long duration from trans-Atlantic slavery and colonialism to today. And we must understand the intersectional contexts and sociopolitical depths of reproductive harm and the sociopolitical production of disablement.

As Bridges writes, we must understand the function of the dysgenic state as producing impairments “not in its citizenry generally, but in its nonwhite citizenry specifically” (298). The racial effects of the dysgenic state (a concentration of impairment in racialized communities) align with the motivations and effects of the eugenic state (the purging of impairment from and “purification” of white communities), thereby linking histories of state-supported racialized reproductive oppression across time and throughout its varying political, medical, and scientific measures.

Bridges’ ability to capture the particularity and increasing ubiquity of the dysgenic state is impressive and offers much to scholarly research at the site of disablement, racialization, and eugenics. I look forward to engaging more with her work and encourage others to do so as well!

Thanks Desiree for letting us get to know you and your work!

More beautiful Great Lakes images from Desiree below.

Share Button

Book Review Updates

Get in touch to review some of the great titles coming out this year!

2024 is shaping up to be great book year and there were some great titles closing out 2023 as well.. The International Journal of Feminist Approaches to Bioethics always welcomes reviews of titles likely to be of interest to our audience.

Some that have caught our attention are:

The Bloomsbury Guide to Philosophy of Disability an edited collection by Shelley Tremain described as a ” revolutionary collection encompassing the most innovative and insurgent work in philosophy of disability.”

Lisa Diedrich’s new book “Illness Politics and Hashtag Activism” which promises to be another great read in the disability scholarship space.

For fans of feminist writer Silvia Federici and other thinkers on the reproduction of society, Gotby’s new work “They Call It Love: The Politics of Emotional Life” is likely to be a must have.

Last but not least, “Reclaiming Space: progressive and multicultural visions of space exploration” Edited by James S. J. Schwartz, Linda Billings, and Erika Nesvold looks to be a nice counternarrative to much of the capitalist, extractionist, and eugenic thinking about space exploration.

If you’d like to review these or any other recent or upcoming titles for the journal, please get in touch with our Book Review Editor, Emma Tumilty.

Share Button

Gaza Health Crises in News and Scholarship

Since our last post on the issue in November, the series of health crises facing Palestinians has worsened considerably. After 140 days of escalated hostilities and ongoing Israeli bombardment, both basic utilities and healthcare infrastructure have been decimated, leaving those who survive in the occupied Palestinian territories––including the 1.7 million people, or 75% of the population, who have been displaced––with direly few resources for tending to both new and existing health needs. This comes on top of the Palestinian death toll which, as of February 17th, the Gaza Ministry of Health estimates at over 29,000 lives lost.

  • According to the WHO, 7 out of 24 hospitals in northern Gaza remain, and only at partial levels of functioning. 7 out of 12 hospitals in southern Gaza remain partially functional. Hostilities in the areas around Nasser Medical Complex and Al-Amal Hospital are making both centers difficult or impossible for patients and ambulances to access. The WHO again called for an immediate ceasefire and the protection of civilians of healthcare.
  • The New York Times and UNICEF both report that failing sanitation systems and a shortage of toilets in encampments in Rafah are increasingly spreading infectious disease including Hepatitis A cholera. 
  • The Global Nutrition Cluster reports that food poverty is rampant––faced by over 90% of children between 6 and 23 months old. The WHO, the World Food Project, and UNICEF have raised the alarm that the escalating hunger crisis will soon cause scores of children to die, as one in six children under 2 years is already currently malnourished. 
  • Pregnant and postpartum people, as well as newborns and infants, continue to be in dire need. The Guardian reports that although relief organizations such as the Safe Birth in Palestine Project have provided virtual counsel, telecommunications are simply not adequate to the problem and are increasingly unavailable to many people in need. 
  • UNRWA’s official statement of February 13th supports the issues raised above and also underscores the heavy loads carried by each healthcare worker: an average of 113 patients per day. They urge support for the pool of healthcare workers in Gaza over the entrance of international healthcare workers, and emphasize the need for wound care and mental health care.

Although health conditions in Gaza have been in dire straits for years––particularly since the beginning of the Israeli blockage in 2007––academic bioethics as a whole has paid little attention to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and, particularly, to the health conditions of the Palestinian people. This tendency has not been universal, however: Zohar Lederman (2024, 2023, 2020) has been especially vocal in drawing attention to the cascading health crises in Palestine and has repeatedly underscored the responsibility of bioethicists to use their normative tools and platforms to denounce the injustices (with Shmuel Lederman and Emily Shepp Daniels, 2019).

In BMJ Global Health, Layth Hanbali, Edwin Jit Leung Kwong, Amy Neilson, James Smith, Sali Hafez, and Rasha Khoury characterize Israeli operations as the escalation of a necropolitical regime waging death and forcing millions to live, debilitated, in its shadow. The authors write that “the moral foundations of global health and medical practice require us to prioritise and foreground oppressed realities, and to practise epistemic resistance.”   

recent piece by Mishal Khan and someone writing under the pseudonym Alu Tacon Tinua in The Lancet is also worthy of note: the authors condemn human rights violations in Gaza while also highlighting the institutional silencing and retaliation against healthcare professionals and researchers supporting justice in Palestine. They conclude, “For many, institutions’ silence and their role in silencing in the face of a raging, manufactured public health crisis in Gaza reveals their level of commitment to challenging racial stereotyping and dehumanisation better than statements they have made.”

Institutional resources and calls for action can be found in several bioethics-adjacent fields. The Palestine Program for Health and Human Rights at Harvard offers an online information hub with recent popular and academic publications, as well as intensive summer courses and fellowship opportunities (though both calls for applications have passed for the current cycle). Both a the National Women’s Studies Association and an independent group of philosophers have called for a ceasefire and end to the siege in Gaza. See links for more information and resources. If you’re aware of any other feminist bioethicist efforts in this direction, please do share in the comments below. 

Share Button

Calls for Abstracts & Papers Ripe for International/Feminist/Bioethics Approaches

March 1st Deadline: Call for Papers in the Centennial Celebration of the work of Mary Warnock (1924-2019)

The Journal of Applied Philosophy (JOAP) plans a special issue to commemorate Mary Warnock’s centennial with the final issue of the 2024 volume. The issue will feature both academic articles (6000-8000 words) in any area of applied philosophy, with special emphasis on areas in which Mary Warnock published; as well as shorter interventions (1500-3000 words) in public philosophy, understood as the attempt to engage lucidly and nontechnically with timely issues of public debate or to put issues onto the public agenda.

Academic articles: Papers are invited in any area of applied philosophy, with special emphasis on those in which Mary Warnock published. Papers should be prepared for anonymous review according to JOAP guidelines and submitted through the Journal’s submission portal. When submitting, select “Special Issue” and type in “Warnock”. Deadline: March 1, 2024

April 30th Deadline: Call for Abstracts for the Care Ethics Research Consortium Conference “Care, Aesthetics, and Repair”

This conference aims to bring together care ethicists; artists, designers, and other makers; artistic researchers; architects and urban planners; philosophers; methodologists; educators; policymakers; and others committed to exploring the fundamental question: what does it mean to care? Scholars and practitioners from all disciplines within and beyond the humanities and social sciences are invited to submit either an abstract (between 250-300 words) for a 20-minute presentation or a proposal for a work of art/performance on the theme of aesthetics, care, and repair in the context of modern-day society.

Possible topics include but are not limited to:

  • Everyday performance and aesthetics of care
  • The art of care and the care of art
  • Politics and care aesthetics
  • Care aesthetics and reparative justice
  • Care ethics and postcolonial repair
  • Care aesthetics, ecology, and the environment
  • Aesthetics and ethics of multi-species care
  • Feminist, queer, trans*, and decolonial care aesthetics
  • Care ethics, repair, and disability justice
  • Care aesthetics and the subversion of oppression
  • Maintenance work and caring infrastructures
  • Care aesthetics, public health, and urban planning
  • Design thinking the aesthetics of care
  • Care practices in contemporary literature and art
  • Caring and the ethico-aesthetics of death, grief, and loss
  • Aesthetics of care and democracy in crisis
  • The aesthetics of embodied care
  • Arts-based methodologies in care ethics
  • Care performance as resistance
  • Care ethics and decolonial aesthetics
  • Artful practices of care and speculative ethics
  • Critical and creative pedagogies of care
  • Co-creating cultures of care
  • Beauty in caring
  • Care ethics and aesthetics in times of precarity
  • (Post-)pandemic care aesthetics

Submission guidelines

Send your abstract or art proposal for peer review to cerc.conference.2025@gmail.com by Tuesday 30 April 2024. Please type ‘CERC proposal’ and your last name in the subject line. Individuals may only submit one proposal. In your e-mail, please include a brief biographical note (250 words max) with primary research or artistic interests and institutional affiliation (if applicable).

Please attach a Word document to the e-mail that is anonymous and ready for peer review. The Word document should contain:

  • the title of the presentation;
  • the abstract (250-300 words max), which should outline the main arguments of the paper, as well as its theoretical and/or empirical contribution(s) to the existing literature (and a few words on methodology, if applicable);
  • presentation equipment requirements (if applicable);
  • indicate whether you wish to present on-site (24-25 January 2025) or online (30-31 January); if you prefer to present online, please specify your time zone.

Artistic and performative contributions, as well as poster presentations, may also be proposed to the organizing committee of the conference. In case of artistic or alternative contribution formats (e.g. performance lectures, video or sound papers, embodied social justice workshops, ritual, dialogue, curation, etc.) please clearly describe all technical and logistical requirements of the contribution, including equipment needed, whether you are providing that equipment, space requirements, any special auditory, lighting or other physical needs, time needed for set-up, etc.

Panel proposals will also be considered (please include a brief description of the panel, the abstracts of three papers, and the name of a chair and discussant).

Criteria for the selection of presentations include effective and explicit engagement with the conference theme, clarity of the abstract, contribution to the diversity of presentations, and potential significance for advancing the field of care ethics. We cherish transdisciplinary and intergenerational dialogue, and encourage the inclusion of voices, perspectives, and practices that are not commonly heard in academic conferences.

Decisions on the abstracts will be communicated by Monday 1 July 2024. Please note that the abstracts selected for our conference will be posted (as received) on our website prior to the conference. All conference presenters must register for the event before the conference program’s official release date. Detailed information concerning accommodation in Utrecht and registration costs will be offered on the CERC website in the summer of 2024. For questions about the conference or abstract submissions, please write to cerc.conference.2025@gmail.com.

Share Button

Submit to New Series on Health & Incarceration

See the below call, which would benefit greatly from feminist bioethical analyses of a range of issues at the intersection of health and incarceration.

_____________

The Hastings Center Report: Special Series on Health and Incarceration

Incarceration has been intertwined with bioethics since the field’s founding: early protections of research subjects focused on incarcerated people as an especially vulnerable population deserving of heightened attention. But despite the clear impacts of carceral systems on public and individual health, bioethics has only begun to provide normative analyses of these systems and their effects. The implications of deeming this population “vulnerable,” moreover, are ambivalent. Although significant scholarship on the intersection of health and incarceration exists in related disciplines, especially public health, integrating these issues into mainstream bioethics is necessary to inform clinical ethics practice in health care systems serving currently and formerly incarcerated people. On the theoretical side, the urgent task is to evaluate challenges that incarceration may pose to existing theoretical frameworks and ethical priorities within the field of bioethics itself. Virtually any issue that arises in clinical and public health settings beyond prison walls, from population aging to the integration of AI-driven technology, also appears within them. But while the issues may be familiar, the unique constraints of the correctional system and the marginalization of incarcerated and previously incarcerated people demand redoubled attention to the specificities of this setting.

The Hastings Center Report, a bioethics journal, invites contributions to a new series on Health and Incarceration co-edited by HC Presidential Fellow Dr. Mercer Gary and Dr. Jennifer James, Assistant Professor of Social and Behavior Sciences at UCSF. The peer-reviewed series, which will begin in the 2024 issue of HCR, may include original articles (max 7,500 words), as well as essays (max 3500 words), case studies (max 2000 words), and first-person narratives of direct service providers (max 2000 words). Authors are encouraged to consider normative questions concerning the appropriate goals and practice of prison medicine, health impacts of incarceration, and access to health care services and continuity of care following incarceration. Pieces should attend to issues of racial, gender, and disability justice endemic in carceral healthcare and authors from groups under-represented in bioethics are strongly encouraged to submit. We will prioritize ethical analysis from currently and previously incarcerated people. Researchers from disciplines outside of bioethics are invited to submit normative research written for a general scholarly audience. 

Email garym@thehastingscenter.org with questions and submissions.

Share Button

In The News: Trans Health is a Local and Global Issue

2024 is kicking off with… a lot of proposed anti-trans legislation and policies. Aspects of anti-trans sentiment and action can feel very particular to local, regional, or national politics and attitudes. Yet the fact of anti-trans legislation and regulation is a local and global phenomenon, and illustrates the need for and value of truly international approaches in feminist bioethics.

An entirely non-exhaustive roundup of recent news

As the website Trans Legislation Tracker notes “2024 is just getting started, but anti-trans bills continue to be introduced across the country” in the US. That includes a whopping 275 pieces of introduced state legislation across 32 states. There are also 38 proposed national bills.

2024 is just getting started, but anti-trans bills continue to be introduced across the country. We track legislation that seeks to block trans people from receiving basic healthcare, education, legal recognition, and the right to publicly exist.

275 bills
32 states
0 passed
274 active
1 failed

A map shows the states highlighted in which legislation has been introduced which includes states across the entire country.

Another approach to introducing harmful anti-trans measures is through executive action that circumvents legislative processes. An IJFAB blog post from last year details one such approach taken by an Attorney General in Missouri. Recently Ohio’s governor vetoed legislation approved by state legislators only to then issue his own Executive Order regarding gender affirming surgeries and proposing state rules for regulation of gender affirming care (in which medical ethics gets a mention).

The UK has been navigating anti-trans sentiment – with the only dedicated gender clinic shutting down in 2022 and as recently as last month the UK’s minister for women and equalities compared gender-affirming care and conversion therapy. The approach to gender affirming care in minors is generally sourced in a European model often referred to as the “Dutch Protocol.” But scrutiny of this approach is not limited to the US and UK, but is increasingly arising in European nations too.

Amidst all this, the World Health Organization (WHO) is convening an interdisciplinary group of experts next month to develop a “new guideline” to “provide evidence and implementation guidance on health sector interventions aimed at increasing access and utilization of quality and respectful health services by trans and gender diverse people.” As discussed on the blog back in 2018 regarding WHO disease classification and transgender people, such moves can come with benefits and detriments. In this case, the WHO has gathered a broad range of perspectives among their experts – much to the dislike of anti-trans voices who vocalized their disapproval of a trans bioethicist and expert being invited.

An entirely non-exhaustive review of recent bioethics literature

It is a good time to turn to international and feminist approaches to bioethics in response to all this. Florence Ashley has a publication track record on trans law and trans bioethics related topics and a recent essay on “What is it like to have a gender identity?” Theodore Schall and Jacob Moses recently published “Gender Affirming Care for Cisgender People” in the Hastings Center Report. A similar theme emerged in an essay by Lydia Polgreen in the New York Times that challenged the ways in which gender identity and regret are deployed selectively. Each of these texts help trouble assumptions about the very language and themes deployed in so-called “debates” about trans health and ethics.

A PubMed search of new publications that came out last month alone revealed three international essays address trans health and bioethics. From Spain comes “The ethics of nursing care for transgender people” and “Health care for trans people: a bioethical reflection” and from France “Assisted reproductive technology in France: The reproductive rights of LGBT people” detailing how although laws regulating ART in France have expanded to include same-sex female couples, they still typically exclude gay men and trans people from accessing reproductive technology.

If you are writing in this area, or others, consider submitting your work to IJFAB to add to the literature.

Share Button

Feminist Bioethics Spotlight Series

Feminist Bioethicists, are you interested in spotlighting you and your work in the IJFAB Blog? We want to hear from you! The editors of the IJFAB Blog are starting a new series that spotlights researchers at all career stages working in feminist bioethics, broadly construed. The spotlight is an opportunity to be interviewed for the blog in a flexible format that can be tailored to each spotlighted scholar.

Our aim is to reflect the methodological, disciplinary, topical, and individual diversity of the field and the many people doing, and ways to take, feminist approaches to bioethics. Read on for more details on what we are looking for and how to be a spotlighted scholar on the blog…

“light” by A.J.85 is licensed under CC BY 2.0

Early Career & Emerging Scholars

We are interested in featuring emerging and early career scholars (students, post-docs, early career faculty, independent scholars) who situate their work within or related to feminist approaches to bioethics. We want to know what work you are doing, how you think about feminist approaches to bioethics and how you and your work are informed by the history of feminist bioethics and are shaping the future of feminist approaches to bioethics.

Established Scholars & Leaders

The spotlight series is also an opportunity to hear from established scholars in the field. Many blog readers will already be familiar with your work, and the spotlight series is an opportunity for readers to learn from leaders and scholars who have helped shaped feminist approaches to bioethics, to better understand the history and evolution of feminist approaches to bioethics, and for established scholars to highlight the new directions and scholars they are looking to as the future of feminist approaches to bioethics.

How to Participate

The scholar spotlight will be in an interview format. We’ll send you a list of questions from which to select and respond. Interviews should be kept to a reasonable blog length and we’ll work with you to condense for space and clarity as needed. We welcome including links to your own scholarship and that of others you wish to highlight.

If interested in being interviewed or if you have a scholar to nominate (of any career stage and setting) please contact Elizabeth Lanphier who is the IJFAB blog editor point person for the spotlight series. You can email her at elizabeth.lanphier@cchmc.org.

We look forward to learning about and featuring both new and longstanding scholars working within feminist approaches to bioethics through this spotlight series.

Share Button

Spotlight: October 2023 Issue of IJFAB

We’re pleased to present the table of contents and abstracts from the latest issue of IJFAB: International Journal of Feminist Approaches to Bioethics. For the full issue, see University of Toronto Journals.

Dirk Lafaut & Gily Coene, “Autonomy Without Borders? Understanding the Impact of Undocumented Residence Status on Healthcare Relationships in Belgium”
https://doi.org/10.3138/ijfab-2023-03-20

“Access to public healthcare services for Belgium’s undocumented migrants is regulated through a parallel, administrative procedure within the legal framework of Urgent Medical Aid. This imposes several constraints on their access to healthcare services. Drawing on empirical-ethical methodologies, we show how this procedure impacts on the relationship between patients with undocumented status and healthcare workers. We use the concept of relational autonomy to show how the imposed legal constraints reduce the formal treatment options available to healthcare workers, but simultaneously lead to informal care practices, and how the latter increase the discretionary power of the healthcare workers. We argue that in this context, provision becomes unpredictable and arbitrary, with undocumented migrants tending to value strong personal relations with one particular, trusted healthcare worker. Although this leads to increased dependence, it also increases patients’ options and autonomy by providing access to wider professional networks attached to that healthcare worker.”
Keywords: agencyBelgiumbioethicshealthcare accessrelational autonomyundocumented migrant

Vicki Toscano, “The Responsibility Objection to Thomson Re-imagined: What If Men Were Held to a Parallel Standard?”
https://doi.org/10.3138/ijfab-2022-0011

“This article focuses on a resonant debate initiated by the publication of Judith Jarvis Thomson’s groundbreaking article “On Defense of Abortion” in 1971. It is my contention that philosophers who argued against Thomson based on what has come to be called the “Responsibility Objection” did not fully examine the gender assumptions embedded in their logic. Rather than attempt to prove the flaw in the Responsibility Objection directly, I demonstrate it by applying the same logic used to discuss women’s responsibilities to men to prove that it also supports forcing men to get a vasectomy. What I show is that the Responsibility Objection, when no longer clothed in a set of gendered assumptions, is not logically convincing. Further, given that the Responsibility Objection supports the logic the U.S. Supreme Court recently relied on in Dobbs vs. Jackson Women’s Health in overruling Roe vs. Wade, the examination of the flaws in this logic is timely and important.”
Keywords: abortionJudith Jarvis Thomsonresponsibility objectionDobbs vs. Jackson Women’s Healthvasectomy

Wendy A. Rogers & Jacqueline Dalziell, “What Feminist Bioethics Can Bring to Synthetic Biology”
https://doi.org/10.3138/ijfab-2023-0004

“Synthetic biology (synbio) involves designing and creating new living systems to serve human ends, using techniques including molecular biology, genomics, and engineering. Existing bioethical analyses of synbio focus largely on balancing benefits against harms, the dual-use dilemma, and metaphysical questions about creating and commercializing synthetic organisms. We argue that these approaches fail to consider key feminist concerns. We ground our normative claims in two case studies, focusing on the public good, who holds and wields power, and synbio research projects’ particularity and context. Attention to feminist concerns is essential for synbio to realize its potential in ethically justifiable ways.”
Keywords: ethics of synthetic biologyfeminist bioethicscase studiesempirical bioethics researchresearch for the public good

Johnny Brennan, Molly Kelleher, Rossio Motta-Ochoa, Stefanie Blain-Moraes & Laura Specker Sullivan, “Situated Personhood: Insights from Caregivers of Minimally Communicative Individuals”
https://doi.org/10.3138/ijfab-2022-0016

“For caregivers of minimally communicative individuals, providing support in the absence of clearly meaningful responses is ethically fraught. We conducted a secondary analysis of qualitative data from caregivers of individuals who are minimally communicative, including persons with advanced dementia and individuals in disorders of consciousness. Our analysis led to two central claims: (1) Personhood is a threshold concept that is situated, relational, and dynamic and (2) in circumstances in which personhood is difficult to judge, caregivers can “fill the gap” to reach the threshold through a repertoire of strategies. Because personhood is in part an attribution from others, a situational loss of personhood does not preclude restoration, nor does it eliminate moral status.”
Keywords: personhoodcaregivingmoral statusdisability

Yingyi Luo, Denise Cuthbert & Shelley Marshall, “The Representation of Cross-Border Surrogacy in Australian Surrogacy Events”
https://doi.org/10.3138/ijfab-2022-0030

“As a method of family formation, cross-border surrogacy is controversial and beset by risks of exploitation. This article extends the literature on surrogacy by examining the way Australian surrogacy promotion and information events represent cross-border surrogacy. It examines the emerging phenomenon of surrogacy events held by a not-for-profit surrogacy organization to promote cross-border surrogacy in Australia—a country that prohibits commercial surrogacy. The article draws on observations from a series of surrogacy events in Australia and online during the 2019–21 time period. It examines the presentations given at these events by surrogacy facilitators, surrogate mothers, and intended parents. We observed four themes: (1) Intended parents are positioned as consumers, (2) the benefits of cross-border commercial surrogacy are highlighted relative to other methods of family formation, (3) the positive side of cross-border surrogacy is accentuated, and (4) reproductive rights are emphasized. These representations run counter to feminist framings of cross-border surrogacy as exploitative and risky. This paper understands that the framing of surrogacy that occurs at these promotion events to be neoliberal in nature. The conceptualization helps explain their consumerist peppiness and commodifying subjectivity.”
Keywords: feministsurrogacy eventscross-border surrogacyAustralianot-for-profit organization

Chantal Bayard & Phyllis L.F. Rippey, “Cornering the Market on Maternal Affect: A Discourse Analysis of a Social Media Marketing Campaign for Infant Formula”
https://doi.org/10.3138/ijfab-2022-0015

“Breastfeeding advocates and global health agencies have been sounding alarms about the dangers of digital marketing practices of the formula-feeding industry. This study comprised a feminist discourse analysis of materials produced (blog, social media posts, comments) in a paid partnership between baby formula brand Enfamil and an influencer, Marilou Bourdon from Trois fois par jour. Our analysis reveals a sophisticated marketing campaign that co-opts feminist critiques of breastfeeding promotion discourse while carefully avoiding explicitly violating the International Code of Marketing of Breast-milk Substitutes. Underlying this campaign is a rhetoric reliant on pathos to assuage maternal guilt and shame for feeding formula.”
Keywords: breastfeedinginfant formulaemotionmarketingsocial media

Olivia Schuman, “Should Bionormativity Be a Concern in Gamete Donation?”
https://doi.org/10.3138/ijfab-2023-0009

“An important argument against removing donor anonymity is that such state-mandated policies might validate bionormative attitudes about the importance of genetic relatedness in families. Bionormative attitudes can be unjustly disparaging and harmful to a wide range of families including donor-conceived, adopted, and single-parent families. However, studies show that the majority of donor-conceived individuals want donor anonymity removed. This paper explores the question of how to weigh these desires for knowing the donor—which may be grounded in biased and bionormative assumptions—against the competing concern that removing donor anonymity perpetuates attitudes that may be harmful.”
Keywords: gamete donationreproductive ethicsfamily ethicsgenetic information

Natalie Dorfman & Joel Michael Reynolds, Commentary: “The New Hysteria: Borderline Personality Disorder and Epistemic Injustice”
https://doi.org/10.3138/ijfab-2023-0008

“The diagnostic category of borderline personality disorder (BPD) has come under increasing criticism in recent years. In this paper, we analyze the role and impact of epistemic injustice, specifically testimonial injustice, in relation to the diagnosis of BPD. We first offer a critical sociological and historical account, detailing and expanding a range of arguments that BPD is problematic nosologically. We then turn to explore the epistemic injustices that can result from a BPD diagnosis, showing how they can lead to experiences of testimonial injustice which impede patient engagement in meaning-making activities, thereby undermining standard therapeutic goals. We conclude by showing how our arguments bolster ongoing efforts to replace the diagnostic category of BPD with alternatives such as complex post-traumatic stress disorder.”
Keywords: epistemic injusticesexismborderline personality disorderdiagnosispost-traumatic stress disorder

Moira Kyweluk & Autumn Fiester, Commentary: “The Ethical Mandate of Fertility Preservation Coverage for Transgender and Gender Diverse Individuals”
https://doi.org/10.3138/ijfab-2022-0009

“For individuals pursuing medically assisted gender transition, gender-affirming surgical treatments, such as oophorectomy (removal of the ovaries) and orchiectomy (removal of the testicles), cause sterility, and gender-affirming hormone treatment with medications (i.e., testosterone and estrogen) may negatively impact infertility. The major United States (US) medical associations already endorse fertility preservation (FP) through cryopreservation (i.e., “freezing” egg and sperm) for transgender individuals. Despite these endorsements from the relevant medical societies, medical insurance coverage for FP remains very limited in the US. Given the high out-of-pocket costs for FP services, fertility preservation remains financially out of reach for many transgender individuals who may desire it. We present an ethical justification for universal FP coverage for all transgender and gender diverse (TGD) individuals who request this option during medically assisted gender transition. First, we argue that gender-affirming medical care is analogous to other medical interventions and treatment regimens that compromise fertility, such as cancer care, and that both types of interventions need to be afforded the same medical benefits and assistance in pursuing fertility goals. Second, we argue that the lack of FP for transgender individuals contributes to the ongoing and profound transphobia and anti-trans bias that has been exacerbated in the past several years across the healthcare landscape in the United States. We argue that the provision of FP coverage for transgender individuals is necessary for clinicians and third-party payers to state their unequivocal support for TGD patients and their healthcare needs.”
Keywords: clinical ethicsfertility coveragequeer bioethicsreproductive justicetrans health

Michael DeProost, Commentary: “Male Fertility-Related mHealth: Does it Create New Vulnerabilities?”
https://doi.org/10.3138/ijfab-2022-0028

“Male fertility–related mHealth (MFmHealth), including smartphone applications that allow men to test their fertility at home, is getting some attention now and then. In this commentary, I argue that MFmHealth technology has the potential to undermine established norms around male reproduction but cannot be examined using traditional individualist frameworks in bioethics. Instead, theoretical literature on the concept of vulnerability in feminist bioethics allow a theoretical alliance with critical studies of men and masculinities. Proposed benefits like empowerment, shared responsibility, and democratization may justify disruptive innovation but may also obscure more fundamental ethical concerns about vulnerability and social justice.”
Keywords: male fertility–related mHealthmasculinitypaternal effectssocial justicevulnerability

Rebecca Simmons, review of Abortion to Abolition: Reproductive Health and Justice in Canada by Martha Paynter
https://doi.org/10.3138/ijfab-2022-0029

Share Button

FAB Gab Update: handing over the reins

The latest mini-episode of FAB Gab is out now, to announce an exciting change! Emma Tumilty will be taking over as host of FAB Gab, and Kathryn is stepping back after 3 years at the helm. In this episode, Emma introduces herself, and Kathryn reflects on why she has had such a great experience hosting the podcast.

It’s short and sweet, and we look forward to returning to regularly scheduled programming, bringing you new interviews with great scholars!

Thanks so much for listening!

Share Button

News Roundup: Health Crises in Gaza

The ongoing Israeli siege and bombardment of Gaza has exacerbated existing health crises and ignited new ones. We offer a list of reputable news sources addressing the mutli-faceted threats to health and healthcare delivery in the occupied Palestinian territories.

  1. The healthcare system is in dire straits. The WHO reports that 34% of hospitals are currently not functioning, while 64% of both Ministry of Health and UNRWA primary care clinics are closed. The same WHO report documents 168 attacks on healthcare between October 7 and 22, affecting hospitals, other healthcare facilities, ambulances, and healthcare workers. Health needs and healthcare system functioning are increasingly under threat in the West Bank, where both settler and military violence are rising.
  2. Pregnant people are laboring and delivering without access to medical supplies, clean water, and electricity. The United Nations Population Fund writes that 5,500 of the 50,000 pregnant people currently in Gaza are expected to deliver in the next month. Pregnant people in Gaza are at increased risk of miscarriage amidst the stress and shock of forced evacuations and the ongoing bombardment.
  3. Save the Children reported that a total of 3,195 Palestinian children had been killed in Gaza as of October 29, more than the annual number of children killed in conflict zones across the world since 2019. Children account for at least 40% of fatalities in Gaza. At least 41 children have been killed in the West Bank.
  4. Very little humanitarian aid has been allowed to pass into Gaza. Gazans lack access to food, water, fuel, or medical supplies necessary for treating injuries sustained in the bombings, as well as treatments like dialysis for pre-existing conditions. Medication supplies are being depleted. Electricity and internet outages similarly interfere with the delivery of medical care. While 25 trucks carrying humanitarian aid were delivered on November 5, these supplies are woefully inadequate to deal with the extremely high levels of need. See here for updates on UNRWA efforts.
  5. The AMA offers several more general resources for health-related issues that arise in the context of war.

Share Button

Update on FAB Congress 2024 in Doha, Qatar

Every two years, the International Association of Bioethics holds the World Congress of Bioethics, at different venues around the world. Since 1996, the Feminist Approaches to Bioethics network (FAB) has held its own gathering as a satellite meeting before the WCB itself. As many of you will know, the venue for the 2024 WCB is Doha, Qatar. The selection of Qatar for the 2024 WCB has caused considerable controversy in the bioethics community, not least following the recent events in Israel/Palestine.

As the two co-coordinators of FAB with responsibility for the 2024 FAB Congress, we have been asked variants of the question: Why is a feminist organisation even thinking of holding a meeting in Qatar?  On the other hand we have also been asked how we can possibly not go ahead, particularly since WCB/FAB has taken place in other controversial locations in the past.  In this blog post, we want to lay out some of the background, and contribute to the ongoing discussion in what is a rapidly changing context.

A key point to understand is that the decision to hold the WCB in Qatar was made without consulting with FAB (an omission which we have discussed with the IAB leadership and that should not occur in the future). This meant FAB was faced with either agreeing to go ahead with plans for the meeting, or not having a meeting at all. 

A second important point is that whatever our personal opinions, it isn’t up to us, your co-coordinators, to make this decision on our own.  We have held several meetings with IAB and with the FAB Advisory Board, and in October last year called an online meeting of FAB members at which all views were solicited. Below, we outline the main points put forward. We are deliberately not setting them out as ‘reasons for going ahead’ vs ‘reasons for pulling out’; we don’t want to frame this as a weighting of two sides, but rather to illustrate the issues that people were concerned about and that were raised at this meeting.

  • Some LGBTQ members were concerned about their personal safety, as well as the principle of visiting a country that criminalizes some same-sex relationships.
  • Opting out of our association with the WCB congress after 28 years, just when the Congress is being held for the first time in an Arab state, could indicate (or be perceived as) Islamophobia.
  • Holding international conferences in Qatar is associated with high demand for air conditioning and for long distance travel, causing significant environmental damage.
  • The cost of travel to and accommodation in Qatar will make it impossible for some people to attend.
  • Holding the FAB Congress in Qatar is an opportunity to meet with, and provide moral support to, feminists and women’s rights activists from Qatar and the region, particularly if we can facilitate contacts with local women’s health groups.
  • Realistically, FAB on its own has neither the resources nor the staff to hold the kind of conference that people expect (we depend on the goodwill of IAB, who underwrite our conference and provide support for registrations, audio visual services, and usually also travel and other grants).

Ultimately, a vote held at the end of this meeting was in favour of continuing to plan for the FAB Congress in Qatar.

Since then, we as co-chairs have continued to work towards that goal, knowing however that the discussion is continuing and the context fluid. Over the months we have received strongly worded messages from both points of view. A survey of FAB members in September indicated that far fewer than usual were considering registering for the Congress. And when the original deadline for abstract submission closed (since extended to 31 October), the number of submissions was much lower than is normal for FAB Congresses — although on the other hand it should be noted that there is a higher than usual proportion of submissions from the region. As things currently stand, and assuming the same rate of submission, it is unlikely that a standalone FAB Congress will be viable; if so, it might still be possible to timetable a session on Feminist Bioethics within the WCB itself.  

But of course, things recently got a lot more complicated when the conflict between Israel and Hamas reignited. This is a sensitive situation and, like many other states in the region, Qatar’s role in this conflict is far from straightforward. Currently, it is not possible to predict what the state of play will be in mid-2024, either in terms of the war itself or of the overall safety in the region.

We want to be clear that this blog post isn’t about trying to persuade people to attend in person, or even to register for, the FAB Congress. However, there is a growing likelihood that FAB 2024, which was always planned to be hybrid, will end up being mostly or completely online, and we know that for some of you this will make a crucial difference. If so, please submit your abstract before the deadline of 31 October 2023, and remember to register before 10 January 2024 (for general registration) and 4 March 2024 (for online presentations). 

Despite the difficult circumstances we remain committed to providing the best FAB Congress possible, while respecting differing, and sincerely held, views and decisions.  We’d like to thank the FAB Advisory Board for counsel and support over the past months; we welcome any questions or comments.

Anna Gotlib and Jackie Leach Scully, FAB Co-coordinators

Share Button