(Image by Ekaterina used under CC license via)
On Friday the British Parliament resoundingly struck down a bill that would guarantee its citizens the right to physician-assisted death. Yesterday California’s legislature voted to make it the sixth state in the U.S. to legalize it.
Robust, nuanced arguments have been made for and against physician-assisted death for terminally ill patients, and none of these arguments could be successfully summarized within a single article. This is why a conclusive stance on the issue will never appear on this blog. It is nothing but moving to hear the deeply emotional pleas from those in the right-to-die movement who have thought long and hard about the prospect of death, who feel empowered by having some choice when facing down a daunting fate, who don’t want to find out which of their loved ones may turn out to be unskilled at care-giving. And it is equally moving to hear the experiences of those working in hospice and palliative care who face the approach of death every day with the determination to make it as minimally painful and emotionally validating as possible for all involved.
However, despite the emotional validity of both sides, there are tactics the right-to-die movement should avoid if it does not wish to make our culture more ableist than it already is. Openness about end of life decisions can shed light on a subject previously cloistered away, but the more the right-to-die movement celebrates the idea of ending someone’s life before it transforms into a certain condition, the less willing the public may be to engage with and invest in those who live in that condition.
Which is why no one should call physician-assisted death “Death with Dignity,” as lawmakers in Washington, Oregon, and New York have done. The implication that anyone who opts out of assisted death might live an undignified life is reckless and arrogant. A patient declaring the prospect of invasive life-saving interventions “too much” is fair. A writer declaring the quality of life of those who opt for them “pathetic” is ostracizing. It insults not only those enduring late-life debilitation, but the everyday conditions of many, many disabled people of all ages around the world.
Even today, when so many movements push to integrate disabled people into the mainstream, the average person is generally isolated from the reality of severe deformity, high dependence, and chronic pain. This isolation feeds fear and is therein self-perpetuating. As opponents have pointed out, many right-to-die arguments quickly snowball, equating terminal illness with chronic illness and disability, and portraying all three as a fate worse than death. Hence the name of the New York-based disability rights group Not Dead Yet.
Vermont’s recent law, the Patient Choice and Control Act, bears a far less polemic name than the others currently on the books. That’s a start. Experts are divided as to whether the current openness about end of life decisions in the U.S. has led to more terminally ill Americans considering and opting for hospice and palliative care. Regardless, both sides should be encouraging well-informed discussions that honor a patient’s right to voice his beliefs based on personal experience, and a disabled person’s right to not be further marginalized by a culture that has historically feared her existence.
*Note: I use “physician-assisted death” and other terms in deference to World Suicide Prevention Day this past Thursday and the media guidelines from the Center for Disease Control, which discourage use of the word “suicide” in headlines to avoid contagion.
Painting On Scars 