Integrating intersectionality into autonomy: Reflections on feminist bioethics and egg freezing

Michiel De Proost

doi:10.21825/digest.v7i2.16532

Abstract

The field of bioethics struggles with the complexity of diversity and power differences. ‘Intersectionality in Clinical Medicine: The Need for a Conceptual Framework’ (Wilson et al., 2019) and its accompanying commentaries, though inventive and thought-provoking, overlook key principles of biomedical ethics. In this paper, I reflect on the debate and consider how an intersectional approach could inform normative theorizing. Traditional principlist reasoning leads to serious problems when we are trying to deal with the complexities of intersectionality, and this is especially true if we look at the principle of autonomy. I develop the idea that intersectionality is more in line with feminist inquiry in bioethics that attempts to reconfigure autonomy. However, feminist critiques of autonomy often remain less than thoroughly engaged with intersectionality. The case of social egg freezing is used to further support this claim. By foregrounding an intersectional approach to the existing relational autonomy claims in this debate, the complicated relational and justice concerns of reproduction are better brought into focus.

Highlights

Bioethics emerged in the late 1960s, triggered by the ethical issues arising from rapid advances in biomedicine and widespread protest against such gross abuses of medical authority as Nazi doctors’ experiments and the Tuskegee Syphilis trial
First of all, starting from the premise that our identities and self-conceptions are constituted in relationships of interdependence and embedded in the complex contexts of social structures, feminist bioethicists offer an interesting alternative in relational interpretations of autonomy
Recent publications in The American Journal of Bioethics offer a point of departure for a more integrated and sustainable conversation on intersectionality’s relevance in bioethics

Summary

Introduction

Bioethics emerged in the late 1960s, triggered by the ethical issues arising from rapid advances in biomedicine and widespread protest against such gross abuses of medical authority as Nazi doctors’ experiments and the Tuskegee Syphilis trial. I want to contribute to the emerging debate on intersectionality in bioethics by sketching out how an intersectional approach could inform normative theorizing in this field. I note that they do not examine the relationship between intersectionality and existing normative theories (such as principle-based formulations) and their underlying central values, including autonomy.

Results

Conclusion