Bioethics influences public policy, scientific research, and clinical practice. Thinkers in Continental traditions have increasingly contributed scholarship to this field, and their approaches allow new insights and alternative normative guidance. In this essay, examples of the following Continental approaches in bioethics are presented and considered: phenomenology and existentialism; deconstruction; Foucauldian methodologies; and biopolitical analyses. Also highlighted are Continental feminisms and the philosophy of disability. Continental approaches are importantly diverse, but those I focus upon here reveal embedded models of individualized autonomy (...) in medical discourses and encourage awareness of medicine's normalizing edges, thereby drawing attention to lacunae in traditional bioethical frameworks. (shrink)

The disability critique of negative genetic selection is frequently accused of threatening reproductive liberty. This paper describes the disability critique and defends it against that objection. It also contends that the critique can work to deflate belief in genetic determinism. Recognizing the influence of genetic determinism helps advocate for existing persons in the disability community and protects reproductive liberty. The disability critique can point to genetic determinism but does not suggest a ban or obstacles to the choice of negative genetic (...) selection; therefore, it is not antithetical to reproductive liberty, as has been charged. (shrink)

The following is dedicated to promoting a version of the disability critique of negative genetic selection while navigating claims that launching such a critique threatens reproductive liberty or is unavoidably antichoice. I highlight problematic conceptual assumptions regarding genetics and choice made by proponents and opponents of selection alike and bring out the underlying ableist values of the prevailing conversation. Ableism is discrimination against persons on the basis of perceived disability. I conclude that the existing social and institutional milieu surrounding genetic (...) selection threatens persons who experience difference with stigma and its accompanying political and social disadvantages. My .. (shrink)

Transhumanist arguments in support of radical human enhancement are inimical to disability justice projects. Transhumanist thinkers, the strongest promoters of human enhancement, and fellow travelers who claim enhancement is a moral obligation, make arguments that rely on the denigration of disabled embodiment and lives. These arguments link disability with risk. The promotion of human enhancement is therefore open to significant disability critique despite transhumanism’s claims to allyship with disability justice activism. This chapter lays out such a disability critique of enhancement (...) and further supports its claims by describing bioethics, and therefore transhumanism, as biopolitical in the sense Michel Foucault uses the term. Finally, this chapter develops an alternative vision of enhancement. This alternative vision poses a disability-inclusive future, accepts the risks of embodiment, and lays groundwork for a counterdiscourse of enhancement. (shrink)