Re/Thinking Bioethics: Reproduction and Non-Reproduction in an Intersectional Bioethics’ Perspective

Abstract

The article begins by reconstructing the main feminist bioethics perspective as a “new discourse” within the official bioethical discussion. It illustrates how the moral discussion and juridification have contributed to remove reproduction and non-reproduction from the personal and intimate context, reinventing them as a “states business”. This process framed these issues in terms of “duties”, “rights”, “family planning”, “demography”, and “population policy”. In this manner, law and morality have helped to reinforce a specific construct of fertility, motherhood, and family. By comparing two interrelated forms of Cross Border Reproductive Care (CBRC), concerning abortion and surrogacy, the article analyses how bioethical and legal frameworks – through their polarized and dichotomic discussion between law and morality – confirm and strengthen gender injustice in reproductive life. That comparison of cross-border travels highlights that surrogacy and abortion restrictions stem from a shared social and legal paradigm that relies on traditional gender roles and reveals how the stratification of reproduction is based on multiple discrimination along the lines of gender, race, and class. Finally, the article introduces an intersectional bioethics point of view on reproductive health to re-read the phenomena of non-reproductive and reproductive tourism and to propose a critique of the main global Northern feminist bioethical discourses and ethical-philosophical paradigms.