Women, Ethics, and Inequality in U.S. Healthcare

When seriously ill, what contributes to a sense of being truly cared for and respected? This compelling book explores healthcare inequalities by listening closely to Black and Latina women with breast cancer. It puts their stories into conversation with current healthcare statistics, sharp theological imagination, healthcare providers, and social ethics. The paperback edition’s Preface addresses U.S. healthcare realities post the 2010 Healthcare reform legislation. In all, Vigen contends that ethicists, healthcare providers, and scholars arrive at an adequate understanding of human dignity and personhood only when they take seriously the experiences and needs of those most vulnerable due to systemic inequalities.

Aana Marie Vigen explores health and healthcare inequities in the U.S. and around the world, the ethics of genetic testing and artificial reproductive technologies, ethnographic methods in Christian ethics, and notions of “a good death” in her scholarship and teaching. Currently Associate Professor of Christian Ethics at Loyola University Chicago, she earned her Ph.D. in Social and Theological Ethics at Union Theological Seminary in New York in 2004.