What is bioethics?
Bioethics is the exploration of moral and ethical questions surrounding life, health, science, medicine, and the environment. While the roots of bioethics lie in philosophy and theology, today’s bioethics requires collaboration among many additional areas of study, including law, medicine, biology, politics, sociology, and business.

Why should we care about bioethical issues?
The rapid advance of biotechnology is quickly outpacing our ability as a society to absorb how our lives will be affected by it. We are already grappling with many serious and wide-ranging issues such as cloning, stem cell research, in vitro fertilization, and prenatal identification of genetic disorders, just to name a few. Advances made possible by biotechnology will profoundly affect what it means to be human and how we live our lives. It will have implications in many areas, including politics (public policy, legislation, control of resources), spirituality (What is life? What does it mean to be human?), and culture (What does it mean to be a mother if children are born outside the womb? What implications do our genetic make-ups reveal? What are the implications of new technology for gender, class, and race?).

 

Why do we need the Women’s Bioethics Project?
Women’s voices, perspectives, and experiences are not adequately represented in the current bioethical debates, public policy decisions, or in academic research. The majority of those leading the public debate are men. Women can neither rely on nor expect men to represent the entire range of human experience and perspective. Although several other women’s policy institutes exist, none is dedicated to bioethics. In the absence of rigorous, accessible, and thorough scholarship focused through the lens of women’s experience, women risk not being heard on complex bioethical issues. The Women’s Bioethics Project was created to fill that gap.

Why now?
Because policy decisions on these issues are being made now, often with insufficient information and public review. Policy makers and voters are considering bioethical concerns when they decide whether to fund stem-cell research. Courts are facing bioethics questions when they consider which of three “parents”—an egg donor, a gestational mother, and a social mother—should receive custody of a child. The media cover these issues with emotionally charged, ideologically driven sound bites that fail to educate the public. Meanwhile, despite the general clamor, women’s voices are under-represented.

 

Historically, women have entered late in the political game. Without a voice in shaping the legislation and policies that affect their lives, women have had to contest inadequate solutions after the fact. Bioethics policies are still being formulated, and women must weigh in before it’s too late.

 

Who else is doing this?
No women’s group or think tank has yet taken on this challenge—leaving women, the media and leaders with neither a clear place to go for reliable information on gender-related bioethical issues nor an effective mechanism to advocate on behalf of women’s concerns. A number of research institutes and professional organizations, such as the Hastings Institute and other university-affiliated bioethics centers, work on bioethical issues but they are not focused on outreach to opinion makers, public engagement, and advocacy.

Why is it important for women’s experiences to be included?
The realities of women’s lives are different from men’s—also socially, politically, and economically. It is women who take care of the young, the old, and the sick of the world. Relative to men, women are politically disenfranchised and economically dependent. Women’s access to healthcare, including prenatal care, is subject to outside control in a way that men’s is not.

Likewise, women’s bodies are different from men’s. As outlined in the Institute of Medicine’s 2001 report, Exploring the Biological Contributions to Human Health: Does Sex Matter?, important sex differences exist in the incidence, risk, causation, and presentation of certain diseases. Treatments that work one way in men may work another in women. And given women’s capacity to bear children, many reproductive issues affect women’s lives differently than they do men’s. Although women are now being included in more medical research and clinical trials, most medical research has focused on males.

For most of history, positions of power and seniority have been occupied by men. Men have set research agendas, chosen funding priorities, written laws and public policy, and determined which questions are worthy of attention. These decisions affect all of us—not only men. It is vital that women have a place at the table.

How can the Women’s Bioethics Project make a difference?
Illustrations of the power of women’s voices are the achievements women have made politically in the last 30 years. Through the increased participation of women in political parties, special interest groups, and especially as elected officials, women’s issues that were previously overlooked have come to the forefront of legislative debate. These include funding for breast cancer research, the inclusion of women in drug trials and medical research, fair credit practices, domestic violence issues, child and elder abuse, rape, equal access for girls to sports, and child care.

 

These issues were not top-of-mind for men, and it took women speaking up to make them heard—yet advances in these areas improve all our lives. As in politics, women’s voices will not be included in the bioethical debate unless we make a concerted effort to make them heard. By including women in the discussion, we will be ensuring that these complex issues that challenge all of humanity have the benefit of both women’s and men’s perspectives and work.

Does the Women’s Bioethics Project claim to speak for all women?
No, because there is no uniform “women’s view.” A full analysis of women’s experience includes examining race, ethnic background, class, sexual orientation, immigration, and disability status. WBP hopes to represent a broad range of experiences and to engage in dialogue with a number of different perspectives, all with the best interests of society in mind. WBP welcomes diversity and embraces the uncertainty that it brings as a way of increasing our greater understanding of issues.

How will the Women’s Bioethics Project work with other organizations that address bioethical issues?
A number of bioethics centers exist today, including the Hastings Center, the Midwest Bioethics Center, the Kennedy Institute of Ethics, and numerous other university-affiliated organizations. In addition, many think tanks are beginning to include bioethical issues in the areas they study. WBP is exploring partnering opportunities with such groups as the Institute for Women’s Policy Research and the Center for Women Policy Studies. WBP will seek to leverage and collaborate with these organizations as appropriate.

 

WBP will also maintain a close and robust affiliation with academic institutions including the University of Washington, Seattle University, and the University of Puget Sound, as well as institutions outside Seattle. However, as an independent think tank, WBP will retain the freedom to address tough issues and develop its own perspective that is separate from a single institution or bioethics center.

Why is the Women’s Bioethics Project headquartered in Seattle?
Seattle has a long history of hosting cutting-edge enterprises and thought leadership, from Boeing, Microsoft, and Amazon.com, to the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and the University of Washington. Seattle also has a strong and growing biotechnology community to draw on for resources and support. WBP believes that a Seattle base will allow for fresh ideas and a more politically unbiased perspective.