Dignity and Equality in Women's Health Issues to Inspire an Ethics of Care.

Abstract

A careful observation of the phenomenon of human life allows us to understand that from the beginning of the human life cycle until its destruction, the existence of each subject is deeply marked by dependency, vulnerability and, therefore, by the need for solidarity and care. These basic needs, which we call human rights, are nothing more than a reflection of a naturally contingent and relational condition. Our contingent and existentially limited being naturally puts us in relations with others because we are not simply solitary and autonomous individuals who can only fend for ourselves, but rather we are fragile people who need encounters and relationships as a way of personal fulfilment in society, transcending one’s own individuality and, in this way, achieving the greatest possible existential fulfilment and flourishing, precisely to the extent that we are capable of being open and in intersubjective relationships of justice and love towards others. The relationality of the human being is presented to us, therefore, both as an essentially anthropological characteristic and also as a moral imperative that, sublimated by love, allows people of any condition to aspire and achieve existential excellence that transcends and radiates as virtue capable of transforming society and politics. The constitutive relationality from which Martha Rodríguez starts, in her essay, supposes the presence of being in a body, which is precisely what allows us to relate to each other and give life to a certain way of being in the world, with an identity of our own that distinguishes and that allows us to enter into a relationship with the different and diverse. The human body, we could say, has its own ‘grammar’ in which nature and culture, bios and freedom, matter and spirit are intertwined and coexist indissolubly. Trying to know and understand this ‘grammar’ inscribed in the female body allows the author to highlight the particular vocation women have to solidarity and care. Following a careful narration of the symbiosis and reciprocal interrelationships that take place during pregnancy, she will maintain that women do not have an innate or unequivocal predisposition to care, but rather that the relational modality that springs from the potentially maternal body shows a sensitivity the new bioethics, Vol. 28 No. 3, 2022, 196–198