Addressing Anti‐Black Racism in Bioethics: Responding to the Call

Abstract

As a field concerned with ethical issues in health and health care, particularly how structures, policies, and practices unfairly advantage some and disadvantage others, bioethics has a moral obligation to address the long‐standing challenges that racism has posed to the overall health and well‐being of Black, Indigenous, and Latinx people and other people of color. Arguably, the premature death and disease disproportionately affecting Black Americans and the well‐documented association of such death and illness with racism are issues that have not gained due attention in bioethics. This multiauthored report highlights the intergenerational work of mostly Black scholars and aims to create an agenda for bioethics that addresses anti‐Black racism and the ways in which this form of racism threatens the actualization of justice in health and health care, not only for Black people and other minoritized groups but also for all people. This special report contains five major sections representing different approaches to scholarship, including theoretical, empirical, and narrative forms. The first section features two target articles focused on anti‐Black racism and health care settings, with each article accompanied by two commentaries. The second section includes four essays thematically centered around anti‐Black racism and health equity research and practice. Section three features four essays that explore anti‐Black racism and bioethics. The next section consists of four essays framing a braver, bolder, and broader bioethics. We conclude with a powerful tribute to the late Marian Gray Secundy, a bioethics luminary, friend, colleague, role model, and mentor, and a tie that binds together many bioethics scholars who prioritize social justice in their scholarship and praxis.

Does overruling Roe discriminate against women (of colour)?

“…We argue that overruling Roe is indirectly discriminatory against women of color and directly discriminatory against all women. Our arguments continue the current discussion of racism and sexism in healthcare 5,6 and our analysis contributes to understanding how discriminatory aspects of overruling Roe constitute structural racism and structural sexism. Accordingly, while, for the purposes of our argument, we do not need to offer a strict definition of women, we should note that by "women" we mean to refer not just to cis women, but also to people who do not classify as women by conventional and binary classificatory schemes.…”

“…We argue that overruling Roe is indirectly discriminatory against women of colour and directly discriminatory against all women. Our arguments continue the current discussion of racism and sexism in healthcare5 6 and our analysis contributes to understanding how discriminatory aspects of overruling Roe constitute structural racism and structural sexism.…”

“…that are disproportionate relative to the benefits that acting in this way confers on others. 6 Now, we can ask does the stateor the Supreme Courtact in a way which imposes disadvantages on the group of people to which women of color belongs that are disproportionate relative to the benefits that acting in this way confers on others. Answering this question involves clarifying three sub-questions: (1) What are the disadvantages for women of color involved in a ban?…”

Black Bioethics in the Age of Black Lives Matter

“…The Cite Black Women movement underscores the systemic exclusion of Black women's ideas, contributions, and stories in academia and mainstream literature (Cite Black Women n.d.). This problem is pervasive across all of academia, but arguably, fields such as bioethics with founding roots in justice have a heightened ethical obligation to appropriately center the work of scholars of color prioritizing health and racial justice issues (Fletcher et al 2022). Many of us are working collectively to address these critical shortcomings by centering and integrating the perspectives, voices, and realities of scholars of color to expand the bioethics canon.…”

“…Over the last two years, I have been shocked-pleasantly shocked but shocked nonetheless-to see the rapid rise of interest in and awareness of racism in medicine. Many scholars have made a case for racism as a critical issue in bioethics and called for more research and teaching focused on racism within both bioethics and healthcare more broadly (Braddock 2021;Fletcher et al 2022;Ray 2021c;Russell 2021;Yearby 2020). I fully endorse these calls, and have even made them myself (James 2022;James and Iacopetti 2020), yet I have struggled with a sense that calls for examining racism have been taken up without addressing key aspects of the Black Lives Matter movement.…”