A focus on care draws attention to the fact that ethical self-cultivation, even in traditions that foreground moral autonomy, relies upon relationships of dependence. The recognition of relational and ethical dependence is familiar to anthropologists and has long been central for feminist ethics. However, the enormous body of anthropological scholarship that has emerged on care over the last decade raises the question of ethical dependence anew. This chapter problematizes the concept of care. It asks: how might ‘care’ as a topic, and as engaged ethnographically, trouble some of the ways that ethical life more broadly has been conceived in the philosophical and anthropological literature? Conversely, how might attention to the ethical stakes of care trouble some of the rich ethnographic scholarship on care? The chapter draws most substantially on anthropological and philosophical scholarship in virtue ethics and in phenomenology to consider both the relational complexities of care and care’s ineffable and elusive ethical dimensions.

Patients who were once unable to have a child without assistance and patients wishing to have a child with desired traits are now eagerly seeking increasingly complex reproductive plans. These plans commonly involve multifaceted ethical concerns that may not be apparent to patients. The clinicians involved in patient care, including the medical team and mental health professionals, while beholden to reproductive ethics, may vary in terms of their perceptiveness of ethical concerns, their working constructs of medical ethics, and their comfort with addressing ethical concerns. This chapter endeavors to increase the clinician’s depth of understanding and skill in navigating and balancing reproductive ethical principles. In an examination of the core constructs of reproductive ethics, the chapter provides nuance on autonomy and challenges the reach of reproductive liberty.The perspectives of virtue ethics, including parental obligation to the child, feminist ethics, care-based ethics, and communitarian ethics are introduced.Finally, a seven-step decision-making process for considering and addressing ethical concerns is provided.

A variety of approaches have been developed as a way of ‘doing’ medical ethics. While each model may help illuminate different aspects of ethical cases, each have philosophical or practical limitations that preclude one model’s use in all clinical situations. The methods and approaches are described herein, with a brief description of the emphasis and limitations of each. Each model is illustrated through a basic neurosurgical case, reiterated with model-specific details to illustrate the important concepts for each model.