Utopian literature and bioethics: exploring reproductive difference and gender equality

This essay explores how feminist utopian literature can inform bioethical debates regarding the fundamental differences between female and male experiences of human reproduction, focusing on the use of biological and technological methods to redress natural inequalities arising from biological difference. Inherently speculative, utopian fiction serves as a useful tool for interrogating social and political attitudes toward procreation and childrearing, adopting a similar degree of abstraction as a philosophical thought experiment. Thus, there is the potential for bioethicists to engage more thoroughly with this form of literature in order to communicate key ethical issues related to reproductive rights and sexual equality.