Can bioethics help towards a better respect?

The conquering of dignity is the consideration which all human beings deserve simply for what we are in each and every one of the particularities and differences which define us; applicable to persons with disabilities as much as the rest. In addition, respect dignifies those who feel and show it.

Bioethics would like to put within our reach a habit of critical thinking and reasoned analysis of our behaviour, to identify the values on which we base our actions. The ethics sustaining it by no means correspond to moralism, rather a rational consideration of what and why we do something. It is a question of acquiring greater awareness in order to be able to progress and help with this. Progress and health as concepts are closely linked to the idea of personal emancipation. To consider this self-construction, it is a question of seeing it as an effort, always admirable, to take advantage of the opportunity to live.

This effort deserves to enjoy entitlement to general protection, i.e., lack of-discrimination, privacy and confidentiality: an expression of autonomy taking the form it takes and having limitations.

The help which everyone needs must be a companion sensitive to personal and changing needs. Accompanying does not mean walking in somebody else's place, nor overtaking them, but knowing how to be with someone and walk “by their side”. If we take seriously human rights of all humans whatever their characteristics, then we will see that the questions we should ask ourselves are numerous, daily and requiring courage.