Formation | 1992 |
---|---|
Legal status | Network |
Focus | Bioethics |
Key people | Mary C. Rawlinson Anne Donchin |
Subsidiaries | Journal: |
Affiliations | International Association of Bioethics International Journal of Feminist Approaches to Bioethics (IJFAB) |
Website | www |
Feminist Approaches to Bioethics (International Network on Feminist Approaches to Bioethics), or FAB, is a network of feminists in bioethics, adding feminist perspectives to ethical issues in health care and the biosciences. It publishes a journal, IJFAB: International Journal of Feminist Approaches to Bioethics , and is affiliated with the International Association of Bioethics, with which it meets.
FAB was formed in 1992 at the inaugural meeting of the IAB. Its aims are to create a more inclusive bioethical theory from the viewpoint of disadvantaged groups such as women. It critiques bioethical theory that privileges groups with power.
As IJFAB editor Mary C. Rawlinson writes of the general state of bioethics in the introduction to the journal's inaugural issue,
It was as if the masculine marking of the subject in the history of ethics and politics made no difference. Just as medicine has often assumed that it could approach the female body through nosologies and clinical practices drawn from a study of the male body, philosophers and theorists in ethics and politics seemed to think that if feminism requires an extension of the rights of man, it does not require any rethinking of the basic concepts and strategies of bioethics itself.
This assessment assumes that man, the subject of both the sciences of man and the rights of man, supplies an absolute generic. Thus, women's experience is either a special case, whose logic may apply only to itself, or its difference is irrelevant and can be subsumed without harm or loss under the generic man.
From the beginning, feminist bioethics was suspicious of this logic of abstraction in both medicine and bioethics. Its approaches were informed by the feminist critique of this sleight of hand, in which a specific historical experience is installed as the absolute universal in science or ethics. As Anne Donchin and Margrit Shildrik note in this volume, early on feminist bioethics disputed the adequacy of abstract universal norms. Feminist approaches to bioethics challenged the field for its reliance on abstract principles disconnected from the material conditions of action and the specificities of the relationships in which ethical urgencies arise. Feminist bioethics continues to contribute significantly to this critique of abstraction in ethics by exposing the complicity of its supposedly generic subject with concepts of property, propriety (norms), and privilege, as well as with the material practices that these concepts authorize in relation to others. [1]
Co-founding member Anne Donchin writes this on the occasion of FAB's 20th anniversary:
So what has FAB accomplished in its initial twenty years? We should take heart in our influence on the development of feminist bioethics. Through a shared vision and cross-fertilization of theoretical orientations, we have brought fresh perspectives to bioethical theory and major topics in bioethics. Our contributions are distinctive insofar as treatment of these topics is grounded in feminist scholarship that draws on background norms and prevailing conditions that shape health options. We look toward a future when feminist thought has a more profound influence on bioethics, when the voices of the socially marginalized are more fully recognized, and the needs of all social groups are integrated into a system of health-care justice that is responsive to the diverse needs of humans across the globe. That we’ve made it to our twentieth anniversary and continue to have such able leadership gives me fresh confidence that FAB’s future is assured. [2]
Ethics is the philosophical study of moral phenomena. Also called moral philosophy, it investigates normative questions about what people ought to do or which behavior is morally right. Its main branches include normative ethics, applied ethics, and metaethics.
Bioethics is both a field of study and professional practice, interested in ethical issues related to health, including those emerging from advances in biology, medicine, and technologies. It proposes the discussion about moral discernment in society and it is often related to medical policy and practice, but also to broader questions as environment, well-being and public health. Bioethics is concerned with the ethical questions that arise in the relationships among life sciences, biotechnology, medicine, politics, law, theology and philosophy. It includes the study of values relating to primary care, other branches of medicine, ethical education in science, animal, and environmental ethics, and public health.
This index of ethics articles puts articles relevant to well-known ethical debates and decisions in one place - including practical problems long known in philosophy, and the more abstract subjects in law, politics, and some professions and sciences. It lists also those core concepts essential to understanding ethics as applied in various religions, some movements derived from religions, and religions discussed as if they were a theory of ethics making no special claim to divine status.
Applied philosophy is a branch of philosophy that studies philosophical problems of practical concern. The topic covers a broad spectrum of issues in environment, medicine, science, engineering, policy, law, politics, economics and education. The term was popularised in 1982 by the founding of the Society for Applied Philosophy by Brenda Almond, and its subsequent journal publication Journal of Applied Philosophy edited by Elizabeth Brake. Methods of applied philosophy are similar to other philosophical methods including questioning, dialectic, critical discussion, rational argument, systematic presentation, thought experiments and logical argumentation.
Solidarity or solidarism is an awareness of shared interests, objectives, standards, and sympathies creating a psychological sense of unity of groups or classes. Solidarity does not reject individuals and sees individuals as the basis of society. It refers to the ties in a society that bind people together as one. The term is generally employed in sociology and the other social sciences as well as in philosophy and bioethics. It is a significant concept in Catholic social teaching and in Christian democratic political ideology. Although closely related to the concept of charity, solidarity aspires to change whole systems, not merely to help individuals.
Sexual ethics is a branch of philosophy that considers the ethics or morality of sexual behavior. Sexual ethics seeks to understand, evaluate and critique interpersonal relationships and sexual activities from social, cultural, and philosophical perspectives. Some people consider aspects of human sexuality, such as gender identification and sexual orientation, as well as consent, sexual relations and procreation, as giving rise to issues of sexual ethics.
The ethics of care is a normative ethical theory that holds that moral action centers on interpersonal relationships and care or benevolence as a virtue. EoC is one of a cluster of normative ethical theories that were developed by some feminists and environmentalists since the 1980s. While consequentialist and deontological ethical theories emphasize generalizable standards and impartiality, ethics of care emphasize the importance of response to the individual. The distinction between the general and the individual is reflected in their different moral questions: "what is just?" versus "how to respond?" Carol Gilligan, who is considered the originator of the ethics of care, criticized the application of generalized standards as "morally problematic, since it breeds moral blindness or indifference".
Feminist philosophy is an approach to philosophy from a feminist perspective and also the employment of philosophical methods to feminist topics and questions. Feminist philosophy involves both reinterpreting philosophical texts and methods in order to supplement the feminist movement and attempts to criticise or re-evaluate the ideas of traditional philosophy from within a feminist framework.
Ethics: An International Journal of Social, Political, and Legal Philosophy is a peer-reviewed academic journal established in 1890 as the International Journal of Ethics, renamed in 1938, and published since 1923 by the University of Chicago Press. The journal covers scholarly work in moral, political, and legal philosophy from a variety of intellectual perspectives, including social and political theory, law, and economics. It publishes both theory and application of theory to contemporary moral issues, as well as historical essays, provided they have significant implications for contemporary theory. The journal also publishes review essays, discussion articles, and book reviews. The journal employs a triple-blind peer review process.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to ethics.
Martha Albertson Fineman is an American jurist, legal theorist and political philosopher. She is Robert W. Woodruff Professor of Law at Emory University School of Law. Fineman was previously the first holder of the Dorothea S. Clarke Professor of Feminist Jurisprudence at Cornell Law School. She held the Maurice T. Moore Professorship at Columbia Law School.
Ruth Macklin is an American philosopher and retired professor of bioethics.
Hilde Lindemann is an American philosophy professor and bioethicist and emerita professor at Michigan State University. Lindemann earned her B.A. in German language and literature in 1969 at the University of Georgia. Lindemann also earned her M.A. in theatre history and dramatic literature, in 1972, at the University of Georgia. Lindemann began her career as a copyeditor for several universities. She then moved on to a job at the Hastings Center in New York City, an institute focused on bioethics research, and co-authored book The Patient in the Family, with James Lindemann Nelson, before deciding to earn a Ph.D. in philosophy at Fordham University in 2000. Previously, she taught at the University of Tennessee and Vassar College and served as the associate editor of the Hastings Center Report (1990–95). Lindemann usually teaches courses on feminist philosophy, identity and agency, naturalized bioethics, and narrative approaches to bioethics at Michigan State University.
This is a list of philosophical literature articles.
Feminist justice ethics is a feminist view on morality which seeks to engage with, and ultimately transform, traditional universal approaches to ethics. Like most types of feminist ethics, feminist justice ethics looks at how gender is left out of mainstream ethical considerations. Mainstream ethics are argued to be male-oriented. However, feminist justice ethics does differ considerably from other feminist ethics. A universal set of ethics is a significant part of feminist justice ethics. Feminist justice ethics is clear in dividing "thick" morality from "thin" morality. Other ethical approaches that define themselves by differentiating groups from one another through culture or other phenomena are regarded as "thick" accounts of morality. Feminist justice ethics claims that "thick" accounts of morality, as opposed to "thin" accounts of morality, are intrinsically prone to eroding valid feminist critique.
IJFAB: International Journal of Feminist Approaches to Bioethics is a biannual peer-reviewed academic journal providing a forum in bioethics for feminist thought and debate. The journal is a publication of the International Network on Feminist Approaches to Bioethics. Mary Rawlinson was its inaugural editor (2006) and served in that capacity until she stepped down in 2016. She was replaced by a team of editors including Robyn Bluhm, Hilde Lindemann, Jamie Lindemann Nelson and Jackie Leach Scully. Kate Caras as an employee of Indiana University Press was the journal's publisher from 2006 to 2014. She then transitioned to the position of senior managing editor when production was taken over by the University of Toronto Press in 2014.
Françoise Elvina BaylisFISC is a Canadian bioethicist whose work is at the intersection of applied ethics, health policy, and practice. The focus of her research is on issues of women's health and assisted reproductive technologies, but her research and publication record also extend to such topics as research involving humans, gene editing, novel genetic technologies, public health, the role of bioethics consultants, and neuroethics. Baylis' interest in the impact of bioethics on health and public policy as well as her commitment to citizen engagement]and participatory democracy sees her engage with print, radio, television, and other online publications.
Susan Sherwin is a Canadian philosopher. Her pioneering work has shaped feminist theory, ethics and bioethics, and she is considered one of the world's foremost feminist ethicists.
Feminist bioethics is a subfield of bioethics which advocates gender and social equality through the critique of existing bioethical discourse, offering unique feminist arguments and viewpoints, and pointing out gender concerns in bioethical issues.