a cce s s H ea l t h N ews . n e t
M a rc h 2 0 2 6
Volume 11 | Issue No. 104
11
By treating someone as a means to an end, we make them into a
tool to accomplish our goals without allowing them a say in what
happens to them. When surveyed about thought experiments,
most people are, predictably, much less favorable of choices
which use a person as a means to an end. At last, we seem to
have an answer for our earlier question: What does it mean to say
all people have value? No one should be treated as a means to an
end. We are all ends unto ourselves; we are all worthwhile goals.
Naturally, with our answer comes a hundred new questions. What
does that mean for politics? For medicine? Surely, if health care is
all about taking care of people, then it must never treat people as
a means to an end.
Well, as a quick review of the infamous Tuskegee Experiments will
tell you (among a thousand other cases of doctors and scientists
using the bodies of people of color in appalling ways), that's
unfortunately not the case. From policy to practice, medicine still
fails to avoid treating people as a means. Now, reproductive health
care is at the epicenter of this failure.
Facing red tape around many kinds of contraceptives, ignored in
favor of the husband's wishes, and increasingly unable to easily
access abortion care, anyone with a uterus is at constant risk of
being reduced from a person to a means of birthing.
If we want to find common ground and work
together to create change, to make the
world a better place, we have to start with
understanding why we believe what we
believe. Everyone matters. Everyone deserves
a better world, and that world starts with us
working together to make it better.
