The ethics of germ-line gene therapy: challenges to mainstream approaches by a feminist critique

Many mainstream bioethicists visualize the ethical debate surrounding germ-line gene therapy (GLGT) as a conflict of rights and duties between a woman and her fetus and as representative of the larger tension between the principles of autonomy and beneficence and its corollary duty to nonmaleficence. Many feminist ethicists attempt to circumnavigate the purported inadequacies of mainstream ethical approaches and take a much broader, context-oriented approach to reproductive freedom. The first section will describe many of the mainstream conflicts surrounding GLGT and offer a feminist critique of the inadequacies of mainstream approaches. Instead of merely achieving a stalemate in ethical dialogue from the mainstream viewpoint, the application of a feminist view of the fetus and reproductive freedom provides a more equitable and ethically inclusive adjudication of the central issue surrounding the ethics of GLGT, as the second section will show.