Sex and gender policy has become a battleground for attacks on science and expertise. As researchers committed to rigorous evaluation of evidence, the authors examine how evidence is used and misused in debates on sex and gender policy affecting transgender people. Drawing on examples from healthcare, prison housing, and sport, they identify recurring pitfalls: elevating opinion as evidence, excluding trans expertise, discrediting scientific consensus, deploying decontextualized claims, and the influence of scientific disinformation. Amid rising societal transphobia, the authors call for greater integrity and transparency in evidence use, and for meaningful inclusion of trans people’s experiences and expertise in policymaking.
Using Hilde Lindemann’s notion of identity as narratively constructed, this study examines egg providers’ blogs to explore how they make sense of their experiences within a marketized fertility system. A systematic search (2021–23) identified twenty-three blogs, subsequently analyzed through reflexive thematic analysis and interdisciplinary collaborative auditing. The authors found that the bloggers often conformed to the dominant altruistic master narrative, but they also revealed concerns about exploitation and feelings of being treated as “egg machines,” and they created counternarratives. Finally, the authors discuss how the dominance of altruistic framings can contribute to epistemic injustice, constraining how egg providers articulate and have their experiences socially recognized.
Feelings of guilt have been reported by (formerly) pregnant people, for example, after miscarriage, stillbirth, induced abortion, or preterm birth. However, it is sometimes held that they should not feel that way. In this article, the authors (a) scrutinize attributions of guilt, (b) problematize philosophical approaches to guilt-especially Thomas Scanlon's approach-and moral emotions more broadly, and (c) criticize such theoretical-normative interventions in light of sociopolitical expectations surrounding pregnancy. They conclude that, rather than denouncing experiences of guilt in perinatal contexts as "inapt" or "misplaced," the norms and expectations that trigger and cultivate such feelings should be addressed.
The traditional definition of reproductive coercion is limited to interactions within intimate relationships. This limited scope fails to recognize that the attitudes and behaviors that contribute to reproductive coercion are present at all levels of society. This article expands the definition of reproductive coercion to include certain practices in healthcare and law, talks in depth about the issue of reproductive coercion in healthcare, and identifies instances of it. It addresses the issue of pro-reproductive bias and how it contributes to reproductive paternalism in healthcare, and demonstrates that this phenomenon impacts autonomy, which can erode patient trust in healthcare.
Advertising on social media is an important and pervasive form of modern discourse. Through description and critical analysis, this piece unpacks the textual and image-based messages inscribed within and through an Instagram advert for labiaplasty. I argue that the advert is both grounded in-and perpetuates-neoliberal ideals of self-improvement and "self-care" and patriarchal notions of neat and controlled "feminine" bodies. Although this article focuses on a single advert, this is emblematic of a larger societal issue and serves therefore to underscore the importance of equipping young people with media literacy tools.
Nonideal approaches to classic bioethics discourse have brought new solutions as bioethics has struggled to respond to landmark sociopolitical moments. The author builds on these nonideal approaches to argue classic discourse on abortion in bioethics about personhood, rights, and obligations is no longer acceptable as we see Dobbs play out. The author similarly argues classic ways of engaging eugenic discourse about disability amidst the COVID-19 pandemic can no longer continue. In both cases, the same, fundamental thing is lacking: a willingness to acknowledge narratives of identity-based retributory suffering, i.e., that one's identity warrants suffering for being what it is.
This article centers on the dignity and flourishing of disabled persons as a primary impetus in disability ethics. Martha Nussbaum's capability approach recognizes dignity and flourishing as an intrinsic property of all persons. This framework can reconcile the binary of justice in care, with justice being typically impersonal in pursuit of objectivity and care ethics considering interpersonal relationships and unique needs. Dignity from a capabilities approach practices justice through attention toward personalized needs based on the relationality foundational to how training capabilities lead to flourishing.
This paper is a phenomenological case study analysis of the hormone testosterone as narrated in medical education textbooks. This analysis demonstrates that these accounts of testosterone depend on three elements of what Judith Butler terms the "heterosexual matrix," binary sex, naturalized masculinity, and heteronormativity. Those whose sex-assigned-at-birth is inaccurate will mostly receive care on the male/female model of medical practice; likewise, the sexual health of trans, queer, and non-binary populations is poorly represented in medical education, leaving individual practitioners to rely solely on their heteronormative training. In both cases, there is a strong likelihood that patients will receive inadequate care.
In research on pediatric vaccine refusal that occurred in the mid-2010s, an interesting theme emerged-that of the relative privilege of some parents who delay or refuse vaccines. However, privilege is not clearly defined. The author points to accounts of privilege in feminist philosophy to fill this gap but argues that existing accounts are vague about what privilege confers. She offers some clarifications: privilege confers both tangible resources and options to do certain things or be a certain way to dominant social groups. The author then returns to the case of vaccine refusal to demonstrate the nature and value of this distinction in what privilege includes.
This article examines obstetric violence in Spanish prisons through the lens of feminist bioethics and an intersectional perspective. A qualitative study was conducted in four mother-and-child prison units, involving thirty incarcerated women living with their children. Using semistructured interviews and participant observation, instances of obstetric violence were identified during pregnancy, childbirth, the postpartum period, and breastfeeding. The findings indicate that such violence constitutes a severe violation of human rights. This article emphasizes the urgent need to render these harmful experiences visible through feminist bioethics, frame them within a social justice agenda, and promote intersectional and feminist research and public policies that protect reproductive rights.
Some feminist movements treat new reproductive technologies such as ectogestation as having liberatory power. The author argues against this and situates such technologies as part of a neoliberal program that benefits some individuals at the expense of others. Instead of abolishing hierarchies and the oppression that results from them, ectogestation lends itself to perpetuating inequalities at a structural level for the sake of the supposed bodily autonomy of the neoliberal individual. The issue is not with gestation itself, and it cannot be resolved with ectogestation which only serves to disappear the social problem by disappearing the pregnant people who experience them.
Routine pregnancy testing is commonly practiced in acute clinical care settings in the interest of objectively establishing pregnancy status ahead of treatment. Recommendations to routinely test for pregnancy were established shortly after the advent of effective low-cost pregnancy tests and have remained largely unchallenged since. This article investigates patient experiences with routine pregnancy testing, using thematic analysis of survey results to explore themes including trust, redirected healthcare priorities, silencing, and implications for patient privacy through the lens of epistemic injustice. This research highlights ethical shortcomings in current routine pregnancy testing practices and makes several recommendations to remedy these problems.
In 2006, a human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine targeting the four most lethal strands was licensed. In the United Kingdom, females ages 12-13 were the first to be offered the vaccine in 2012. By 2018, the HPV vaccine was extended to males ages 12-13, and then "high-risk" individuals, that is, gay males and "men who have sex with men" (MSM) and, later, transmen and transwomen. Vaccination programs in the United Kingdom are limited; although everyone is at risk of HPV, not everyone is offered the vaccine as part of National Health Service (NHS) services, with age being the primary exclusionary factor. Those most affected are females-the very group most at risk for death from cancers related to HPV-who are ineligible for NHS vaccines after the age of 25. Closing the vaccination gap is essential to aligning individual and public health and remedy unethical policies.
Past and current medical practices of early invasive medical interventions on people with innate variations of sex characteristics (IVSC or intersex variations) include repeated genital examinations. Research on people with IVSC has long shown high levels of anxiety, depression, and suicidality. Increasingly, researchers are looking to medicalization processes themselves, including genital examinations, to explain poor mental health outcomes. The emerging evidence confirms what intersex people have been saying for decades-that these experiences provoke deep, lifelong trauma, shame, and humiliation-often linked to anxiety and depression. This article offers a set of recommendations for effective regulation.
Since 2023, three Canadian provincial governments have announced plans to establish involuntary treatment laws that would apply to people who use criminalized substances, with one province passing such legislation in 2025. In this commentary, the authors attend to the implications of this approach for pregnant people and parents and identify two key concerns. First, involuntary treatment punishes parents, likely contributing to the apprehension of their children-present and future-and undermining their access to health services. Second, involuntary treatment legislation will likely be applied in ways that bolster fetal rights and fetal protection discourse, enabling the confinement of pregnant people.
In this article, the author reviews some of the recent work on intersectionality in healthcare ethics and argues that any successful account of intersectionality in the field ought to consider three essential amendments: (1) it must hold a relational account of autonomy, (2) center loving narrativity, and (3) demonstrate a commitment to social justice. The author argues how these amendments can be pursued and integrated through well-established feminist accounts, such as care ethics and narrative ethics, thus concluding that feminist accounts of bioethics have laid a stronger foundation than competing accounts for integrating intersectionality's core principles into healthcare ethics.
Mobile health (mHealth) technologies are increasingly advertised by companies as means for health and wellbeing empowerment. Although several scholars have analyzed the notion of empowerment at play in mHealth discourses and identified crucial elements for its fulfillment, one theoretical framework that is especially absent in this discussion is that of relational theories of selfhood developed in feminist philosophy. In this article, the author aims to correct this deficit by offering a possible pathway to scrutinize mHealth technologies from a feminist perspective. Specifically, the author starts evaluating one type of mHealth, apps for tracking physical activity, through the lens of a feminist conception of self-respect. Doing this reveals a puzzling tension: whether the use of mHealth undermines self-respect or promotes it is not obvious.
Feminist care theory is useful when thinking about ethical and respectful caring relationships with people with dementia, ethically sound healthcare decisions involving them, and recognizing continuity between these topics. In each, the capacities of people with dementia to care about things and be in caring relationships should be recognized. In each, what their caregivers require to be in good caring relationships with them should be attended to. After defining care, autonomy, and dementia, the author outlines three insights from feminist care theory that guide their approach, which they call Respect for Caring, and then explores its implications.
Should birthing people be able to choose to have cesarean sections for personal (nonmedical) reasons? In 2006, Katherine Beckett considered the right to choose cesareans in relation to three different waves of feminist activism. This article revisits Beckett's questions and asks: Where are we now? While feminist birth politics has shifted, a revised feminist politics of elective cesarean sections is needed. This article offers two conceptual tools: (1) destabilizing the happy-natural nexus and (2) thinking birth as work. These are offered as points of friction with which to think against normative framings of the choice to have a cesarean section.
