Respect for Persons in Bioethics: Towards a Human Rights-Based Account

Human rights are increasingly presented as an important framework for bioethics. This article argues that human rights offer a potentially fruitful approach to understanding the notion of respect for persons in bioethics. The idea that we are due some kind of respect as persons is relatively common, but quite often understood in terms of respecting people's autonomous choices. Such accounts, however, can be too narrow, reducing some human beings to second-class moral status. This article presents a political approach to our position as persons and a strongly pluralist account of human rights that lays the foundations for a more widely applicable conception of respect for persons. It goes on to argue that this model also exemplifies a more general approach to philosophical ethics, an approach that is here referred to as taxonomic pluralism. In terms of respect for persons in particular, this principle is developed in relation to five distinct core issues (autonomy, dignity, integrity, privacy and vulnerability).