Womanist Bioethics - (Religion and Social Transformation) by Wylin D Wilson

About the Book

"Womanist Bioethics introduces a practical framework to address health disparities and inequities, arguing that doing justice to Black women's bodies entails understanding health and vulnerability as cultural productions, thus implicating medical, policy-making, economic and religious institutions in the Black women's health crisis"--

Book Synopsis

Offers Bioethics a bold approach to redress its failing of Black women

Black people, and especially Black women, suffer and die from diseases at much higher rates than their white counterparts. The vast majority of these health disparities are not attributed to behavioral differences or biology, but to the pervasive devaluation of Black bodies.

Womanist Bioethics addresses this crisis from a bioethical standpoint. It offers a critique of mainstream bioethics as having embraced the perspective of its mainly white, male progenitors, limiting the extent to which it is positioned to engage the issues that particularly affect vulnerable populations. This book makes the provocative but essential case that because African American women- across almost every health indicator- fare worse than others. We must not only include, but center, Black women's experiences and voices in bioethics discourse and practice.

To this end, Womanist Bioethics develops the first specifically womanist form of bioethics, focused on the diverse vulnerabilities and multiple oppressions that women of color face. This innovative womanist bioethics is grounded in the Black Christian prophetic tradition, based on the ideas that God does not condone oppression and that it is imperative to defend those who are vulnerable. It also draws on womanist theology and Black liberation theology, which take similar stances. At its core, the volume offers a new, broad-based approach to bioethics that is meant as a corrective to mainstream bioethics' privileging of white, particularly male, experiences, and it outlines ways in which hospitals, churches, and the larger community can better respond to the healthcare needs of Black women.

Review Quotes

"Presents an original, social change-oriented framework that calls US bioethics to center Black women's lives as well as matters of racism, rurality, gender, spirituality, and faith communities in the essential work of health justice. In this rich constellation of Womanism, Black Church prophetic witness tradition, and Black health activism, Wylin D. Wilson lays fertile ground for the flourishing of womanist bioethics and anti-oppression bioethics at large."--Charlene Galarneau, author of Communities of Health Care Justice

"Womanist Bioethics is the cornerstone, the chief foundation upon which biomedical scientists, healthcare professionals, policy makers, chaplains, and teachers in the biosciences can use to work toward justice for vulnerable populations. Dr. Wilson has given us the essential theoretical and social change framework to dismantle medical apartheid and healthcare disparities among BIPOC, particularly Black women and girls. The theory of womanist bioethics meticulously weaves Black women's experiences throughout the book as it critiques mainstream bioethics and advances feminist bioethics. Thank you Dr. Wilson! This is the book that I've been waiting for!"--Evelyn L. Parker, Perkins School of Theology, Southern Methodist University

"I have been waiting for this book for 15 years. It at once uses and performs a Womanist methodology, offering a different narrative and different 'origin story' of bioethics rooted in the institution of chattel slavery and particularly its treatment of and effects on the bodies of Black women. Importantly, it matches critique with hope--highlighting how centuries old practices of care central to the Black Church help us think in new ways about critical issues such as rural health disparities and Black maternal health. . . A must-read for those who work in medicine, the church, or bioethics, as well as for those who know that we have to start thinking differently about how we care for the health of each person and our communities."--M. Therese Lysaught, Loyola University Chicago

"Wylin D. Wilson has gifted us with an insightful analysis that elaborates on the problem of the healthcare system, much like other societal structures, being marred by systemic racism and sexism. Yet, Wilson does something incredibly different: Building on the foundation of Katie G. Cannon's development of a womanist ethic in Black theology and Manning Marable's discussion of the three primary functions of Black Studies as descriptive, corrective, and prescriptive, Wilson addresses the pressing issue of Black women's healthcare. Her argument underscores the importance of Black Studies in documenting the lived experiences and histories of Black people, and of rectifying historical and systemic injustices, and she offers a new bioethical framework for addressing these issues."--Dána-Ain Davis, author of Reproductive Injustice: Racism, Pregnancy, and Premature Birth

About the Author

Wylin D. Wilson is Assistant Professor of Theological Ethics at Duke Divinity School. She is the author of Economic Ethics and the Black Church.