Bioethics Must Exemplify a Clear Path toward Justice: A Call to Action Faith Fletcher a,* , Shameka Poetry Thomas b , Folasade C Lapite c , Keisha Ray d a Center for Medical Ethics and Health Policy b National Institutes of Health, National Human Genome Research Institute c Tulane University School of Medicine d UTHealth Houston, McGovern Center for Humanities and Ethics Introduction Fabi and Goldberg (2021) raised important considerations regarding both research and funding priorities in the field of bioethics, and in particular, the field’s misalignment with social justice. While we agree that funding is one of the main drivers of an academic’s field’s priorities, we argue that the field of bioethics must first lead the charge by demonstrating a commitment to social justice and anti-racism in bioethics. Shifting social justice to the forefront of funding priorities thus requires reprioritizing what ought to be central to the mission and vision of bioethics. This shift also demands deeply examining the field’s historic and contemporary structures, practices, and norms that inhibit bioethics issues from gaining academic visibility and prominence. Fabi and Goldberg highlight the paucity of bioethics funding directed towards ethically examining the structural causes of persistent health inequities, including addressing how Black women are 243% more likely to die from preventable prenatal complications in the US (Adams et al. 2017; McLemore 2019). We argue that a lack of allocated bioethics funding to address this national public health crisis (National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, “Systemic Racism, a Key Risk Factor for Maternal Death and Illness”) is reflective of the field’s historic and current moral failure to prioritize health and health care inequities. Arguably, the foundational framing of bioethics neglects the lived experiences, dilemmas, distress, and collective trauma experienced by minoritized individuals and communities as a direct result of structural injustice. Scholars maintain that bioethicists should be concerned with the moral experience as a framework of inquiry to fully capture what is ethically at stake and of value to both individuals and communities (Hunt and Carnevale 2011; Ray 2021). Indeed, bioethicists have a duty to illuminate the moral experiences and realities of those disadvantaged by structural racism (Danis et al. 2016) and other forms of systematic marginalization. Thus, we contend that the field of bioethics must exemplify a clear path towards justice and * Faith Fletcher (faith.fletcher@bcm.edu), Center for Medical Ethics and Health Policy, USA. HHS Public Access Author manuscript Am J Bioeth. Author manuscript; available in PMC 2023 January 01. Published in final edited form as: Am J Bioeth. 2022 January ; 22(1): 14–16. doi:10.1080/15265161.2021.2001113. Author Manuscript Author Manuscript Author Manuscript Author Manuscript