IJFAB: International Journal of Feminist Approaches to Bioethics

We are preparing this special issue celebrating the work of Susan Sherwin under extraordinary circumstances. We are sitting in our homes, isolating ourselves from each other, in order to support and protect each other. Each of us is curtailing our preferences in order not only to protect ourselves but to protect everyone else in our community—local and global—from COVID-19. In this historic moment it is abundantly clear that our lives are inescapably relational—that, through our own decisions and actions, each individual makes possible, or impossible, other actions for other people. To take a relatively simple example, consider one type of physical distancing that our (Canadian) government is asking us to practice at the moment: keeping two meters away from others when outside our homes. The ability to achieve this goal depends on others either trying to achieve it themselves or respecting our wishes to do so. It is not enough to stay to the far side of a wide path when passing others if they opt to walk down the middle. At the same time, the burden of carrying out this practice will be quite different depending on one's age, ability status, income, where one lives, and myriad other factors. For instance, people sharing space in a homeless shelter may not be able to keep two meters away from each other and may well have significantly more pressing concerns and threats to their well-being than a global pandemic, even though they may be at a relatively high risk of dying should they become infected.

Relational autonomy, particularly as it is described in Susan (hereafter Sue) Sherwin's work (e.g., 1998), recognizes that, far from the exception, this is the fundamental character of our lives. Our freedom and ability to act as we choose is inescapably dependent on the choices and actions of others and the social and political circumstances within which we find ourselves. Of course, we miss the point if we think of these interdependent options and choices in a piecemeal way or simply as external forces. As feminist activists have always known, the personal is political. Individual choices and actions scale up into institutions and social structures, which in turn shape not only how we live our lives but how we think of ourselves [End Page 1] and who we are. Moreover, because the institutions and social structures that exist in 2020 are themselves shaped by historical prejudices and colonial practices, the opportunities and options that are open to any one of us will be substantially different to those of others, and some of these differences are manifestly unjust.

As Sue (1998) explains:

Relational selves are inherently social beings that are significantly shaped and modified within a web of interconnected (and sometimes conflicting) relationships. Individuals engage in the activities that are constitutive of identity and autonomy (e.g., defining, questioning, revising, and pursuing projects) within a configuration of relationships, both interpersonal and political. … Under a relational view, autonomy is best understood to be a capacity or skill that is developed (and constrained) by social circumstances. It is exercised within relationships and social structures that jointly help to shape the individual while also affecting others' responses to her efforts at autonomy.

(35–36)

At the same time, as we navigate our own and others' autonomy, the importance of solidarity to public health could hardly be more evident. "Physical distancing" is not simply a way of protecting ourselves. It is a form of collective action through which we both signal and act in solidarity with our community, especially with those who are particularly vulnerable to the virus—in this case, the elderly and the immunosuppressed—and with healthcare workers, fighting to save people's lives and struggling to protect their own.

As Sue and her collaborators, Françoise Baylis and Nuala Kenny (2008), have explained, the solidarity that ungirds public health ethics is also crucially relational. Relational solidarity "values interconnections" without projecting or assuming some underlying "collective identity" (205). Our survival is inextricably dependent upon the health and safety of others; this gives us a common...