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

FAB 2024 Submission Deadline Extended!

The FAB 2024 Submission Deadline Extended until Tuesday, October 31st, 2023.

Share Button

CFA: FAB Congress 2024 in Doha, Qatar

Feminist Bioethics, Cultural Differences, and Lived Experience

June 2-3, 2024 in Doha, Qatar

Call for Abstracts 

The Feminist Approaches to Bioethics 2024 congress committee welcomes abstract submissions on any aspect of feminist bioethics. Reflecting the theme of the WCB main conference, we are particularly keen to receive submissions that involve examinations and analyses of feminist bioethics across cultural norms, themes, and experiences. 

FAB is an organization of feminists from bioethics and related disciplines.  Feminist bioethics centers the status, roles, and circumstances of women (broadly defined) in areas such as healthcare, biomedical research, biomedical education, understandings of sex and gender, socioeconomic determinants of health, changing understandings of the family (broadly defined), and biomedical technologies –among many others.  FAB has a strong commitment to embracing contributions from a wide range of disciplines, including philosophy, social sciences, critical cultural studies, law, medicine and public health, history, and psychology, and from scholars from various cultural, religious, and social traditions.  We particularly encourage submissions from early career researchers.

The 2024 Congress:  Our 2024 Congress will be a “hybrid” meeting. Both FAB and WCB will take place in-person in Qatar, offering oral presentations and symposia, as well as virtually, with participants and audiences choosing their presentation and viewing modalities.

Topics and themes

The WCB 2024 theme is “Religion, Culture and Bioethics.” FAB conferences generally echo the main theme, while encouraging authors to extend their inquiry into questions that center feminist concerns. For the FAB 2024 conference, our theme is “Feminist Bioethics, Cultural Differences, and Lived Experience.” Submissions may be theoretical, empirical, or methodological, and will be organized into appropriate thematic strands. Possible themes include:

  • the relationships between culture and bioethics;
  • bioethics in a plural world;
  • gender and emerging biomedical technologies (artificial intelligence, enhancement technologies, neurosciences);
  • disability and disabling conditions;
  • genetics and genomics;
  • reproductive technologies and cultural difference;
  • human rights in health;
  • feminisms and global biomedical research.

Note that this is not intended to be an exhaustive list. Whether or not your abstract falls within one of these areas, please ensure the title and abstract of your submission clearly convey the main theme of your presentation.

The format of submissions is as follows:

  1. Oral papers of 20 minutes plus Q&A;
  2. Short oral papers of 7 minutes including Q&A;
  3. Panels/symposia of 90 minutes.

For more information on submission types and to submit an abstract please see the CFA website

Key Deadlines

  • September 30, 2023 – Deadline for abstract submission
  • December 1, 2023 – Notification of acceptance/rejection decision

See CFA website for additional deadlines for registration

Guidelines for submission

1. General information

  • Before submission, please select if you are submitting to the World Congress of Bioethics (WCB) or the Feminist Approaches to Bioethics (FAB)
  • You may submit different abstracts to each congress BUT not the same abstract to both congresses.
  • Contributions must be submitted online.
  • All papers must be written and presented in English.
  • All submissions will be evaluated in anonymised form (i.e. without author information) by the scientific committee of FAB and WCB depending on to which congress your abstract is submitted.

2. Author information

  • Please provide complete and accurate information on all contributing authors.
  • This includes the full name, institution/organisation, location, and email address of every (co)author.
  • The person making the submission is wholly responsible for the accuracy of the information. The information will be printed as submitted.

3. Presenting authors

Every submission must name at least one presenting author. The presenting author must register for the congress(es) to which they have submitted their abstract, upon its acceptance.

Evaluation

  • Contributions will be anonymised before being evaluated by the reviewer group appointed by the scientific programme committee.
  • Each contribution will be evaluated separately by at least two reviewers.
  • The scientific programme committee will select contributions for acceptance in a final round of evaluation based on the expert evaluations. Their decisions are final.

Submission Form

For submission, please fill in this form (if you are redirected to the main CFA page please check back for the form via that page in the coming days)

The Donchin and Holmes Emerging Scholar Prize

Established on the occasion of FAB’s 20th Anniversary, this prize honors the co-founders of FAB, Anne Donchin and Helen (Becky) Bequaert Holmes. The prize is awarded for the best paper accepted for presentation at the biennial FAB World Congress by a graduate student or early career scholar. The award consists of $500 USD, a certificate, and recognition on the program.

For details on prize application criteria, submission requirements, and judging criteria as well as some important fine print, please see the CFA website where you can also submit your proposal to the FAB Congress. Note that the submission for the Donchin and Holmes Emerging Scholar Prize requires a separate submission process, details of which are on the website.

The winner will be announced at the FAB Congress in June 2024.

Looking forward to an excellent slate of feminist presentations in Doha and online at the FAB Congress 2024!

Share Button

We Need Trustworthy Institutions: Some Lessons from Discriminatory Triage Policies During Covid-19

As the COVID-19 pandemic rapidly progressed in the spring of 2020, several news media outlets, commentators, and public organizations declared that the United States was experiencing a crisis of trust. The United States’ Public Health Code of Ethics states that trust in public health institutions is essential to the implementation of public health initiatives and policies. This is especially the case with large-scale interventions like the ones required to curb the spread of a global pandemic. The public’s trust plays a crucial role in the successful management of health crises. The claim that our society is experiencing a crisis of trust is worrisome. It is particularly worrisome for marginalized groups whose lives are most negatively impacted by the reverberations of the pandemic. 

Amidst this discourse, however, an important point is too often lost. Trust is ineffective without trustworthiness. As ethicist Onora O’Neill notes, the popular claim that we need more trust—whether between persons, or between persons and institutions—is imprecise at best. At a practical level, placing one’s trust in untrustworthy persons or institutions is imprudent. Trusting others makes us vulnerable to them, and this vulnerability can be abused. In some situations, mistrust is warranted. The groups and individuals that bear the brunt of entrenched racial, classed, and gendered health disparities have good reasons to distrust some medical, public health, and governmental institutions. In their discussion of racial inequities in rates of participation to COVID-19 vaccine trials, Warren et al. note that “it would be wrong, as well as ineffective, to ask Black communities to simply be more trusting” in a context where it is unclear whether institutions merit increased trust from these communities. What we need as a society is not generalized trust: we need institutions we can reliably trust. Institutions must demonstrate to the populations they serve, and especially to oppressed and marginalized people, that they are trustworthy. 

More so than a crisis of trust, I would argue that the COVID-19 pandemic exposed failures or deficiencies of institutional trustworthiness. This was evidenced, for example, in the case of the proliferation of medical triage policies which suggested that the lives of disabled people were worth less than those of non-disabled people. Across the United States and Canada, several triage protocols discriminated openly or implicitly against disabled patients. In Alabama, the Emergency Operations Plan instructed hospitals to withhold mechanical ventilator support from patients with severe intellectual disabilities as a last resort. Meanwhile, in Tennessee, some guidelines denied treatment to patients with muscular atrophy requiring assistance with daily tasks. In Canada, the draft COVID-19 Triage Protocol circulated to Ontario hospitals in January 2021 also emphasized a patient’s ability to perform daily tasks without assistance as a selection criterion for care allocation. In addition to being at heightened risk for contracting COVID-19 due to structural injustices, disabled people faced triage policies that were based on deeply biased assumptions about their lives and intrinsic worth.

These policies were criticized from all corners of the disability community. In the United States, advocacy groups in multiple states filed legal complaints alleging that triage protocols were discriminatory. Policies in Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Alabama, and Utah were found unlawful by the Office for Civil Rights at the U.S Department of Health and Human Services. Without the advocacy efforts of disabled people and their allies, thousands more disabled lives might have been lost than has already been the case throughout the pandemic. The triage policies put forth by state and medical institutions are not only alarming because they discriminate against a legally protected class. They are also alarming because they confirm      disabled people’s mistrust of medical and public health institutions. The general message sent by discriminatory triage policies is that in a time of crisis, the lives of disabled people will not be protected in the same way as those of non-disabled people. In acting on unfounded assumptions about the lives of disabled people, medical and public health institutions failed to uphold their professional and ethical obligations to disabled people as a community. To repair the harm done, these institutions must work to establish their trustworthiness. 

If I wish to convince you that I am trustworthy, the simple fact of telling you that I am is unlikely to persuade you fully. Philosopher Annette Baier remarks that the claim “Trust me!” has little sway: “either we do already trust the one who says it in which case it serves at best as reassurance, or it is properly responded to with, ‘Why should and how can I, until I have cause to?’” Instead, I must demonstrate how and why I can be trusted. Both for persons and for institutions, building trustworthiness requires time and investment. It is an active responsibility that must be translated into concrete deeds. For instance, if I wish to show to my friend that I am trustworthy, I should take good care of the plant they have asked me to water while they are on vacation. If they return home to find it dead because I have neglected to water it, they will be disappointed and question my trustworthiness. In contrast, if they come home to a thriving plant, their sense that I am trustworthy will be strengthened. 

In the case which concerns us, the first step is for institutions to acknowledge that they have failed disabled people. By recognizing that they have been untrustworthy, institutions can set the table for repairing relations of trust. Of course, institutions can perfectly well admit to wrongdoing without changing any of their practices. More assurances of their trustworthiness are needed. In a longer version of this essay, I offer additional recommendations for building institutional trustworthiness in times of crisis and beyond them. One of these suggestions is that institutions should adopt an intersectional frame of analysis when analyzing the effects of public health crises. The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on disabled people and Black people and people of color is largely discussed in a siloed manner. When COVID data is gathered, it typically considers race and disability in isolation from each other. This type of single-axis analysis overlooks the devastating effects of the pandemic on Black disabled people and disabled people of color. If institutions do not recognize overlapping forms of socially constructed vulnerability to COVID-19, it is unlikely that they can respond to them adequately, which then undermines their trustworthiness. 

Another suggestion I make is that medical and public health institutions must recognize and harness the expertise of disabled people themselves. This means moving beyond token representation and involving disabled ethicists, medical doctors, patients, and activists—including especially Black, Indigenous, queer, trans, and poor disabled people and disabled people of color—in decision-making practices. Disabled people are experts at developing crisis responses that do not leave the most vulnerable people behind. This is evidenced in the many disabled mutual aid initiatives that sprouted or grew during the pandemic to respond to the needs of disabled people on the ground. Disabled people created guides about where to seek medical care or how to stock up on low-cost food items; they organized grocery deliveries; they made masks and scent-free hand sanitizer and distributed them in their neighborhoods; they also showed non-disabled people everything that could be done on the virtual communication platforms they had already been using for years. Disability justice activist and author Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha recently explained in an interview: “We’re supposed to be the first ones to die, but we have technology and care skills that are going to end up saving all of us. The world is terrifying, but I keep betting on us because we know how to survive.” Rather than giving in to ableist bias about competence, medical and public health institutions should also bet on disabled people’s knowledge and skills. 

Untrustworthy institutions have devastating implications for the lives of oppressed and marginalized communities. The world they create is indeed terrifying, but it is not inevitable; it can be changed if institutions take on the task of building trustworthiness. As feminist bioethicists, we should also reflect on whether different forms of mistrust call for different types of assurances of trustworthiness. The mistrust of oppressed and marginalized people toward institutions that have disregarded their needs is rooted in concrete, experiential reasons. However, this should not be equated with the public’s more pervasive mistrust in news media organizations or scientific institutions, often fueled by right-wing populism. If transferred to this reality, the strategies I have identified here—examining the effects of public health crises through an intersectional lens or centering marginalized voices—may paradoxically end up adding fuel to the fire of distrust. Innovative efforts to bolster the trustworthiness of key social institutions on multiple fronts are needed to address these challenges. 

Corinne Lajoie is a PhD candidate in Philosophy and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and the Crawford Graduate Fellow in Ethical Inquiry at the Rock Ethics Institute at Penn State University. Their work on disability bridges the fields of phenomenology, ethics, bioethics, social philosophy, and feminist philosophy. Samples of their work can be found in Hypatia, The Journal of the American Philosophical Association, and the Bloomsbury Guide to the Philosophy of Disability.

Share Button

Upcoming Feminist/Bioethics Conference Roundup

A handful of upcoming conferences that would be great places to submit or experience new works in feminist approaches to bioethics.

Calls for Proposals due May 15th, 2023

The History & Philosophy of Pregnancy – a hybrid conference at the University of Dayton, October 6-7, 2023. More info and the CFP are here.

The London Feminist Philosophy Conference – at Kings College London, June 15-16, 2023. Work by graduate students and early career scholars especially welcome and limited financial support for travel may be available. More info and the CFA are here.

Upcoming Events in June, 2023

philoSOPHIA 16th Annual Conference – Hybrid Online/In-Person at UNC Charlotte, June 1-3, 2023. http://www.philosophiafeministsociety.com/

This year, we have invited contributions that promote a broad understanding of feminist theorizing and organizing through an examination of both regional and diasporic relations between the U.S. South and the Global South, including relations among African, Indigenous, Caribbean, Latin American, Middle Eastern, and Asian gender/sexuality studies and their U.S. Southern connections. We have also encouraged dialogue on these regional and diasporic relations within transnational disability theory, global discourses of queer/cuir/quare and trans/travesti studies, and migration studies.

Care Ethics Otherwise: A Conference – Penn State University Park, June 9-10, 2023. https://rockethics.psu.edu/care-ethics-otherwise-a-conference/

This conference is an invitation to deeply consider previously underexplored approaches to examining and practicing care ethics and care theory. It is organized around a call to actively decenter understandings of care rooted in white, bourgeois, heteronormative domestic/kinship norms and practices—in other words, a call to think care and do care ethics otherwise. By this the organizers mean (at least) two things. First, we are looking to the margins, to the underground, to unconventional domains to invite reflections on care from those who are regularly othered or experience themselves as “the other.” Second, we are motivated to create space with a focus on reimagining and remaking care ethics otherwise we risk neglecting important opportunities to grow care ethics in new, more inclusive directions. Thinking on care has followed multiple genealogies and flourished across, between, and beyond academic disciplines; accordingly, this conference will be interdisciplinary and open to participants working both within the academy and beyond it.

DIY-ing Gender: A Zine Fest – Durham University, June 9, 2023. https://www.durham.ac.uk/research/institutes-and-centres/gender-law/events/diy-ing-gender/

Supported by Gender and Law at Durham (GLAD) and Durham Centre for Academic Development (DCAD) , we are running a zine fest as an alternative to traditional academic conferences. Zines are created to articulate emerging ideas, lived experiences, and radical positions through a more visual and accessible medium – what is so great about zines is that they allow us, as academics, to present our research outside of the traditional presentation/poster format.

“Teacher, from the Occupations for Women series (N166)” 1887
Open Access from the Museum of Metropolitan Art Collection

Share Button

Obstructing access to gender affirming care in Missouri: the Missouri Attorney General’s “emergency order” goes into effect today, and it’s not about informed consent or protecting kids
avatar

UPDATE: A number of advocacy groups have sued to prevent the rule from going into effect, including the ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union) and Southampton Community Healthcare in St. Louis. The petition says “The Rule targets gender-affirming care with unprecedented and unique restrictions so onerous that it effectively prohibits the provision of this necessary, safe, and effective care for many, if not most, transgender people in Missouri.” The suit sought a stay on the order. After this blog post was written, St. Louis County Circuit Court Judge Ellen Ribaudo issued the stay of enforcement that would allow the court time to “review the briefing sufficiently.” Judge Ribaudo anticipated doing so by May 1. This changes the timeline on implementation. It does not change the substance of this blog entry.

I have been thinking more about Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey’s emergency order restricting access to gender affirming care. The order was scheduled to go into effect today, Thursday April 27 2023. While initially touted by Bailey as “protecting” kids, in fact it affects both minors and adults, and puts serious obstacles in the path of anyone seeking gender affirming care. Since Bailey made it clear adults will also be affected, he has been framing the emergency order as “protecting consumers” and supporting “informed consent” by making sure that “all patients” realize that these treatments are “experimental.” Bailey has in fact said, ““I am standing up to make sure that patients have the information they need to make informed health care decisions.” If this were true, medical ethicists would have to take note, and might even be manipulated into supporting such rules. However, it’s not. Experts from numerous medical associations have pushed back on the claim that these are experimental treatments, instead noting that they are considered standard of care with decades of evidence for effectiveness and are not experimental. And the St. Louis Department of Health has issued a statement condemning the order on these and further grounds (St. Louis is where most gender affirming care in Missouri, especially for trans youth, takes place). Other medical experts and health care institutions have noted that access to gender affirming care improves mental health for trans youth and adults, and reduces suicidality by as much as 73%, thus, making it harder to access gender affirming care is the opposite of protecting trans youth and trans adults. The order isn’t about informed consent, and it isn’t about protecting kids. Let’s explore this further.

Here are the criteria for accessing gender affirming care in the state of Missouri as of today, criteria that probably don’t affect people already receiving care but definitely affect trans youth and adults who are just establishing gender affirming care in Missouri. This handy summary of the criteria is taken from an article in the Springfield News-Leader by Susan Szuch:

  • Assess at least annually whether the patient has gender dysphoria;
  • Disclose a list of information potential negative side effects and information about gender dysphoria;
  • Perform a full psychological/psychiatric assessment, including at least 15 hourly sessions over the span of at least 18 months, to identify whether the patient has any other mental health comorbidities;
  • Treat and resolve existing mental health comorbidities;
  • Track all adverse effects from any course of covered gender-affirming procedures for at least 15 years from the start of the intervention;
  • Obtain and keep on file informed written consent;
  • Ensure that the patient has a comprehensive screening to determine whether or not they have autism;
  • Ensure at least annually that the patient’s gender identity is not the result of a “social contagion;”
  • Ensure at least annually that minor patients are screened for “social media addiction or compulsion”

All of the criteria are quite troublesome in terms of putting in place nearly insurmountable barriers to accessing care. But the two that I want to single out are:

  1. that all other mental health conditions be not only treated but resolved before gender affirming care can begin, and
  2. that the person be assessed for social contagion and prove that their gender identity is not being influenced by others.
Continue reading
Share Button

FAB Gab Episode 31 – Jane Dryden on the Microbiome and the Imperative of Normalcy

In this episode of FAB Gab, Jane Dryden talks about her recently-published paper about the way that microbiome research reflects and reinforces the imperative of normalcy in health and medicine. Through the two cases of obesity and of autism, Dryden argues that healthism and ablism are combined in the way that researchers and popular writers talk about the ‘promise to cure’ in microbiome research.

Here’s a sneak peak from the conversation:

…With autism, there’s a lot of studies that do show a correlation between being autistic and having and having various forms of gut issues. Like they’re just really common. The exact prevalence varies a lot depending on the study. But this correlation kind of comes up again and again. And so you can pretty reasonably ask, you know, would it be helpful if we found sort of useful, useful treatments for this? But the focus is so often on the behaviors. So for example, autistic people frequently stim, right? So kind of repetitive movements and motions and so forth that are aimed at sort of self soothing, and, you know, just interacting with the environment. And the, and so one of the measures of well, did this microbiome therapy work is, well, was there less stimming? And did the person make more eye contact? It’s like, Well, are we worried about this? Or are we worried about whether their stomachs feel okay?

Jane Dryden in conversation on FAB Gab

You can check out this episode on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. Don’t forget to subscribe so that you never miss an episode!

FAB Gab is hosted and produced by Kathryn MacKay.

Share Button

Mifepristone Round-Up

On April 21, the US Supreme Court rejected lower court decisions restricting or altogether banning abortion medication Mifepristone and, by extension, the regulatory power of the FDA. The case is now in the hands of the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, which will begin hearing oral arguments on May 17.

For more details and responses, see the range of sources below.
NPR presents a timeline starting with Texas Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk’s order through yesterday’s response from the Supreme Court.

DemocracyNow! turns to law professor and reproductive justice Michelle Goodwin and abortion provider Julie Burkhart for analysis of Kacsmaryk’s suspension of Mifepristone and the state of abortion care in the US. See also Dr. Goodwin’s book, Policing the Womb: Invisible Women and the Criminalization of Motherhood and guest essay in The New York Times, along with Burkhart’s Salon article.

Meanwhile, Hannah Levintova at Mother Jones presents a long-form investigation of Mifeprex’s private equity investors who stand to profit from the pill’s protection. See also Madison Pauly’s analysis of the resurgence of the Comstock Act for Mother Jones.

Kiarash Aramesh writes for The Hastings Center’s Bioethics Forum that the struggle over Mifepristone and abortion care in the U.S. more generally indicates an accelerating slide into theocracy.

Reach out to the IJFABBlog editors with pitches for feminist bioethical analyses of the struggle for medication abortion.

Share Button

An APA Pacific Meeting With(out) Anita Silvers
avatar

Anita Silvers is depicted. She is sitting in  her powerchair, which has snazzy black and red detailing. She has pale skin, long blonde hair that is greying, is wearing white slacks and a black turtleneck, and wearing large beaded silver jewelry including necklaces and a turqoise ring. She has a blanket across the back of her chair colorfully decorated in geometric patterns common in North American indigenous peoples' blankets. She is gazing at and touching a ceramic sculpture of a mesoamerican person wearing an infant on their back. A ceramic pot rests on the floor next to the left wheel of her chair.
Anita Silvers is depicted. She is sitting in her powerchair, which has snazzy black and red detailing. She has pale skin, long blonde hair that is greying, is wearing white slacks and a black turtleneck, and wearing large beaded silver jewelry including necklaces and a turqoise ring. She has a blanket across the back of her chair colorfully decorated in geometric patterns common in North American indigenous peoples’ blankets. She is gazing at and touching a ceramic sculpture of a mesoamerican person wearing an infant on their back. A ceramic pot rests on the floor next to the left wheel of her chair.

A couple weeks ago was my first American Philosophical Association (APA) Pacific Division meeting where I didn’t get to see my dear mentor and friend, Dr. Anita Silvers (1940-2019), the fearless Secretary-Treasurer for the APA for 26 years. Anita was a philosophy professor at San Francisco State University for over 50 years and department chair for 15 of those years. A “towering figure” in feminist and disability bioethics, to use Dr. Adam Cureton’s fitting description, Anita served on the IJFAB Advisory Board, and long argued for a feminist ethics that bases morality on dependency or vulnerability to challenge the moral priority of uniform over disparate treatment. I first met this revered “authority on disability rights” in 2002 at an APA meeting, where I sought Anita’s advice on my growing research interest in disability bioethics. Anita’s mentor instinct immediately kicked in – she encouraged me to participate in the upcoming NEH seminar, “Justice, Equality, and the Challenge of Disability,” which was to be co-directed by Anita and Dr. Eva Kittay. I am forever grateful for the rich summer seminar and Anita’s subsequent mentoring that sowed the seeds for much of my work in disability bioethics and feminist bioethics. Some of my collaborative (or more like mentored) work with Anita also enriched my thinking on the use of remote AI health monitoring for older adults and people with disabilities.

While I miss Anita and our conversations deeply, and was always impressed with her ability to choose the best restaurants in whatever cities we found ourselves, her legacy was on full display at the APA Special Memorial Session and Reception organized by Anita’s long-time collaborator and dear friend, Dr. Leslie Pickering Francis, completed with chocolates sprinkled across the St. Francis Room and champagne brunch in Anita’s honor. (I have fond memories of helping Anita hide Easter eggs for the Sunday brunch at that same venue, where children of APA attendees would excitedly search for the special treats.)

The full panel sits at a long table in the front of a conference room. There are two light-skinned women and two light-skinned men at the table, all paying attention to a speaker who is standing at a podium next to them gesturing animatedly with her hand. Behind them is an ornate wood-paneled wall and carved fireplace with mantle, as well as a mirror reflecting the warm yellow light of chandeliers.
The full panel sits at a long table in the front of a conference room. There are two light-skinned women (Teresa Blankmeyer-Burke and Eva Kittay) and two light-skinned men (Adam Cureton and Dominic McIvers Lopes) at the table, all paying attention to Dr. Leslie Pickering Francis, the speaker, who is standing at a podium next to them to the right of the panelist table, gesturing animatedly with her hand. Behind them is an ornate wood-paneled wall and carved fireplace with mantle, as well as a mirror reflecting the warm yellow light of chandeliers.
Continue reading
Share Button

Books, books, everywhere…

The International Journal of Feminist Approaches to Bioethics welcomes enquiries regarding book reviews. Our process is supportive, so if you’re a student or a more seasoned academic please do consider getting in touch if there is something on your radar that you think will be of interest to an IJFAB audience.

Some that have caught our attention that we would love to see reviewers for are:

“Abolish the Family” by Sophie Lewis (Abolish the Family – Verso (versobooks.com))

Sara Ahmed’s latest “The Feminist Killjoy Handbook” (The Feminist Killjoy Handbook by Sara Ahmed | Seal Press)

“Black Health” by Keisha Ray (Black Health – Paperback – Keisha Ray – Oxford University Press (oup.com))

“Crip Genealogies” edited by Mel Y. Chen, Alison Kafer, Eunjung Chen, and Julie Avril Minich (Duke University Press – Crip Genealogies (dukeupress.edu))

Amber Knight’s and Joshua Miller’s “Prental Genetic Testing, Abortion and Disability Justice” (Prenatal Genetic Testing, Abortion, and Disability Justice – Amber Knight; Joshua Miller – Oxford University Press (oup.com))

If any of these are of interest or there are others you’d like to suggest please get in touch with our Book Review Editor, Emma Tumilty (emtumilt@utmb.edu). You can read what she thinks makes a good book review here.

Happy Reading!

Share Button

New study on hormonal birth control risks

A new study from Oxford University finds that the slightly elevated risk of breast cancer due to use of hormonal birth control pills extends across all forms of hormonal birth control. While earlier findings showing a similar increased risk were based in the study of combination pills containing both estrogen and progestin–the kind of pill dominant in the 1990s–these more recent results take into account progestin-only “mini pills” and intrauterine devices (IUDs), showing that elevated risk remains consistent across all forms of hormonal birth control. Although the absolute elevation of risk is small (+.15% for women under 40 and +.5% for women under 50 years old), the results are significant given that the population of hormonal birth control users in their 20s and 30s have a lower background risk for the disease, and that progestin-only therapies were previously assumed to carry less risk than combination pills. The results are interesting, moreover, given the significant differences in functioning between hormonal birth control therapies.

Mini pills and IUD

Source: “Study finds same small rise in breast cancer risk in many forms of hormonal birth control,” STATNews (statnews.com)

These findings raise familiar feminist bioethical questions concerning our relative lack of knowledge about hormonal birth control and the predominant focus on modes of contraception that intervene in the reproductive capacities of people with uteruses rather than exploring alternative methods like the “male pill.” Of course, the risks with hormonal birth control methods should be considered alongside their demonstrated benefits. Gillian Reeves, director of cancer epidemiology at Oxford and researcher on the recent study underscored to StatNews that, especially in the context of elevated maternal morality rates in the United States, hormonal birth control is still less risky than childbirth.

Share Button

Feminist Approaches to Bioethics Works-In-Progress Session

On Monday, April 3rd at 12pm Pacific/3pm Eastern (find your local time zone here) the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities (ASBH) affinity group on Feminist Approaches to Bioethics is hosting a virtual works-in-progress session for scholars to get feedback on news works in feminist approaches to bioethics. Anyone working on feminist approaches to bioethics broadly construed is welcome to join, learn about emerging work in feminist bioethics, and provide feedback. No need to be a member of ASBH or the FAB Affinity Group. Registration link here to join.

April 3rd via Zoom: Virtual Works-in-Progress Session Hosted by the ASBH Feminist Approaches to Bioethics (FAB) affinity group

2 New Works In Progress

Hannah Carpenter from The University of Texas Medical Branch will present on “Affording Access to Contraception” arguing that although the US Affordable Care Act has generally improved access and affordability of contraception, in the context of limited abortion access greater contraception access is imperative, including full coverage of contraception without restrictions in order to achieve reproductive autonomy.

Darcy Metcalfe from the University of Findlay will present on “Race-ing the Future’: Ending the Use of Racial Categories in Biotechnology,” a project that aims to end the use of racialized categories in the research, funding, and marketing of genetic biotechnologies in order for new and burgeoning genetic technologies to be free of the racialized harms of medical history.

Come learn about these project, provide collaborative and constructive feedback, and network with others working within feminist approaches to bioethics.

Register Here for April 3rd Event

Complete this link to attend the virtual works-in-progress session on April 3rd at 3pm Eastern Daylight Time.

The FAB Affinity Group

The ASBH Feminist Approaches to Bioethics Affinity Group (FAB) is currently co-chaired by Georgina Campelia (Department of Bioethics and Humanities, UW Medicine) and Elizabeth Lanphier (Ethics Center, Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center) and is seeking new leadership to co-chair the affinity group for a three year term from 2024 through 2026.

Reach out to Georgina or Elizabeth with any questions about the group and its activities including periodic virtual workshops, panels, and networking sessions in addition to the in-person meeting at the annual ASBH conference each October.

Share Button