Abstract
These quotations provide two scenarios of assisted suicide. Derek Humphry posits a person with a condition that is incurable, painful, debilitating, or some combination thereof. She decides, after deliberation and self-analysis, that death is preferable to continued life in these circumstances. Unable to commit suicide on her own, she seeks help. In Diane Coleman’s version, the patient chooses suicide because she lacks other acceptable options, someone else makes the decision for her, or some combination of these factors. She may have disabilities that limit her capacity for self-expression, or her cognitive function may be too impaired for her to form opinions. This act is not assisted suicide but homicide, a felony for which there is no statute of limitations and for which no defense of consent is possible. Humphry’s scenario presents the liberal version. Coleman’s provokes the ironic freedom critique AS.1
In a spirit of compassion for all, this manifesto proclaims that every competent adult has the incontestable right to humankind’s ultimate civil and personal liberty—the right to die in a manner and at a time of their own choosing.
—Derek Humphry, founder of the Hemlock Society
It’s the ultimate form of discrimination to offer people with disabilities help to die without having offered real options to live.
—Diane Coleman, founder of Not Dead Yet
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Notes
Respectively, Katie Hafner, “In Ill Doctor, a Surprise Reflection of Who Picks Assisted Suicide,” New York Times, August 12, 2012, 1;
Thomas J. Sheeran and John Seewer, “Mercy Killings Evoke Sympathy from Many,” Bryan-College Station Eagle, August 13, 2012, A3.
Marcia Angell, “May Doctors Help You to Die?” The New York Review of Books, October 11, 2012, 39.
See A. B. Jotkowitz and S. Glick, “The Groningen Protocol: Another Perspective,” Journal of Medical Ethics 32 (2006): 157–58;
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Bertha Manninen, “Revisiting Justified Nonvoluntary Euthanasia,” The American Journal of Bioethics 8 (2008): 33–35;
Eduard Verhagen and Pieter J. J. Sauer, “The Groningen Protocol—Euthanasia in Severely Ill Newborns,” New England Journal of Medicine 352 (2005): 959–62.
Law of Termination of Life on Request and Assisted Suicide, Chapter II, Article 2. See Jurriaan de Haan J., “The New Dutch Law on Euthanasia,” Medical Law Rev 10 (Spring 2002): 57–75;
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Jo Roman, Exit House (New York: Seaview Books, 1980), 127–28.
Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, ed. Michael Oakeshott (New York: MacMillan, 1962), 102.
See, for example, Benjamin Gesundheit et al., “Euthanasia: An Overview and the Jewish Perspective,” Cancer Investigation 24 (2006): 621–29;
S. M. Mousavi et al., “Euthanasia in Cancer Patients, Islamic Point of View,” Iran Journal of Cancer Prevention 2 (2011): 78–81;
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Paul T. Schotsmans, “Relational Responsibility, and Not Only Stewardship: A Roman Catholic View on Voluntary Euthanasia for Dying and Non-Dying Patients,” Christian Bioethics 9, no. 2–3 (2003): 285–98.
Eric Berne, What Do You Say after You Say Hello? (New York: Grove Press, 1972), 197.
Edwin Shneidman, Definition of Suicide (New York: Wiley, 1985), 203.
Phyllis Rose, Woman of Letters: A Life of Virginia Woolf (New York: Routledge, 1986), 243.
Joseph Fletcher, Situation Ethics: The New Morality (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1966).
Lael Tucker Wertenbaker, Death of a Man (New York: Random House, 1957);
Derek Humphry, Jean’s Way (Los Angeles: Hemlock Society, 1984).
Jack Kevorkian, Prescription: Medicide (Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books, 1991);
Joe Swickard et al., “Jack Kevorkian Sparked a Debate on Death,” Detroit Free Press, June 4, 2011.
Wesley Smith, Forced Exit: The Slippery Slope from Assisted Suicide to Legalized Murder (New York: Times Books, 1997), 11.
Derek Humphry, Final Exit (Eugene, OR: Hemlock Society, 1991), 60.
For exceptions, see Kathleen Foley and Herbert Hendin, eds., The Case against Assisted Suicide (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002); and
Peter Singer, Rethinking Life and Death: The Collapse of Our Traditional Ethics (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994). The former includes articles by academics, activists, and practitioners opposed to assisted suicide; the author of the latter is a philosopher addressing a general audience.
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See also Vanessa Grigoriadis, “A Death of One’s Own,” New York Magazine, December 8, 2003, http://nymag.com/nymetro/news/people/n_9589, accessed August 29, 2012;
Robert D. McFadden, “Carolyn Heilbrun, Pioneering Feminist Scholar, Dies at 77,” New York Times, October 11, 2003.
Mona El-Naggar, “Extolling Female Subservience, and Adding Followers in Egypt,” New York Times, September 7, 2012, A1, A3.
Matt Pearce, “Grace Sung Eun Lee Fights for Right to Die, Chooses Life,” Los Angeles Times, October 8, 2012, http://articles.latimes.com/2012/oct/07/nation/la-na-nn-grace-sung-eun-lee-chooses-life-20121007, accessed October 10, 2012. Lee died February 13, 2013.
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See also Foley and Hendin eds., Case; and Herbert Hendin and Kathleen Foley, “Assisted Suicide in Oregon: A Medical Perspective,” Michigan Law Review 106 (June 2008): 1613–40.
See, for example, Kathleen Foley, “Compassionate Care, Not Assisted Suicide,” in The Case against Assisted Suicide, 293–309; Cicely Saunders, “A Hospice Perspective,” ibid., 281–92.
Katie Thomas, “Drug Shortages Persist in U.S., Harming Care,” New York Times, November 17, 2012, A1, A3.
Oregon Public Health Division, Table 1, “Characteristics”; William Yardley, “Report Finds 36 Died Under Assisted Suicide Law,” New York Times, March 4, 2010.
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See also Rosemarie Tong, “Love’s Labor in the Health Care System: Working toward Gender Equity,” Hypatia 17, no. 3 (2002): 200–213.
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See Jan Slater-Anderson, “Managing Patients or Families Who Demand Medically Futile Care,” University of Oklahoma Medical Sciences Center, November 7, 2008, http://tvs-media-ex.ouhsc.edu/mediasite/Viewer/?peid, accessed September 30, 2012; Thaddeus Mason Pope, “Medical Futility Statutes: No Safe Harbor to Unilaterally Refuse Life-Sustaining Treatment,” Tennessee Law Review 71, no. 1 (Fall 2007): 1–82; Connecticut Statutes, Chapter 368* 209 C. 692 Sec. 19a-571.
Judith A. Baer, Equality under the Constitution: Reclaiming the Four-teenth Amendment (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1983), 190–94.
Southwest ADA Center, “Disability Law Index—Supreme Court Decisions—Employment,” http://www.southwestada.org/html/topical/supremecourt.html, accessed October 8, 2012; Jill C. Anderson, “Just Semantics: The Lost Readings of the Americans with Disabilities Act,” Yale Law Journal 117 (April 2008): 992–1069;
Michael Ashley Stein, “Same Struggle, Different Difference: ADA Accommodations as Antidiscrimination,” University of Pennsylvania Law Review 153 (December 2004): 579–673;
Albertsons v. Kirkingburg, 527 U.S. 555 (1999); Sutton v. United Airlines, Inc., 527 U.S. 471 (1999); Murphy v. United Parcel Service, 527 U.S. 516 (1999);
Jennifer Steinhauer, “Dole Appears, but G.O.P. Rejects a Disabilities Treaty,” New York Times, December 5, 2012, A19.
Margaret P. Battin et al., “Legal Physician-assisted Dying in Oregon and the Netherlands: Evidence Concerning the Impact on Patients in ‘Vulnerable’ Groups.” Journal of Medical Ethics 33, no. 10 (October 2007): 591–97. doi:10.1136/jme.2007.022335.
See, for example, Ruth O’Brien, Crippled Justice: The History of Modern Disability Policy in the Workplace (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001).
Accounts of disability comprise a large subgenre of memoir and biography. Readers unfamiliar with accounts of quadriplegia might consult, for example, John Callahan, Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far on Foot (New York: Vantage Books, 1990);
Harriet McBryde Johnson, Too Late to Die Young (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2005);
Deborah Betts Morehead, Don’t Tell Me I Can’t: A Biography of Kathleen DeSilva (Charleston, WV: Port City Press, 1996); Obituary, “Ed Roberts, the Father of Independent Living,” Independent Living USA, http://www.ilusa.com/links/022301ed_roberts.htm, accessed September 13, 2012;
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Mary Johnson, “Unanswered Questions,” in The Ragged Edge: The Disability Experience from the First Fifteen Years of The Disability Rag, ed. Barrett Shaw (Louisville, KY: Advocado Press, 1994), 186–207.
David Rieff, Swimming in a Sea of Death: A Son’s Memoir (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2008).
Diane Coleman, “A History of Not Dead Yet,” http://www.mcil.org/mcil/mcil/ndy.htm#dc1, accessed August 1, 2009.
Eleanor Lederer, “Lithium Nephropathy,” Medscape Reference, January 12, 2012, http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/242772-overview, accessed October 13, 2012.
Margalit Fox, “Shulamith Firestone, Feminist Writer, Dies at 67,” New York Times, August 30, 2012.
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© 2013 Judith A. Baer
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Baer, J.A. (2013). Right to Die, Right to Live. In: Ironic Freedom. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137031006_2
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