Toward Critical Bioethics Studies: Black Feminist Insights for a Field "Reckoning" with Anti-Black Racism

In this essay, I draw on the ethical theory of state consequentialism to advance the argument that understanding the ethics that the United States practices, rather than focusing on what it preaches, offers a more dynamic path for informing and transforming a field seeking to reckon with anti-Black racism. With a specific focus on justice, I show how state consequentialism provides a potential starting point for understanding how the nation prioritizes its own social, political, and economic interests to the detriment of the very principles that are at the heart of bioethics.