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News, Views and Careers for All of Higher Education
Oct. 5, 2005
Rift in Disability Studies
The U.S. Supreme Court today will hear arguments about a federal challenge to an Oregon measure that allows physician assisted suicide in certain cases.
Related stories
- The Right to be Readmitted?, Jan. 10
- Student, Interrupted, Oct. 15, 2007
- The Price of Disability, March 19, 2007
- Clearing the Way for Disability Claims, Aug. 19, 2005
- Appeals Court Revives Disability Lawsuit, June 14, 2005
The case has divided many medical ethicists — and also scholars in the growing field of disability studies. In May, the Society for Disability Studies joined 11 disability rights groups in submitting a brief to the Supreme Court opposing Oregon’s system as one that had the potential to devalue and damage the lives of people with disabilities. But while the press release announcing the brief proudly includes the Society for Disability Studies, the brief itself no longer does so.
That’s because the society found itself facing criticism from many of its members, some of whom thought the Oregon policy was not as bad as others argued. But beyond the specifics of the Oregon case, some professors argued that the scholarly society had no business taking a stand on an issue like this on which there was no scholarly consensus, that the society hadn’t followed proper procedures to take such a stand, and that a form of political correctness made it hard for professors to speak out in opposition to the brief or to stands taken by some prominent disability rights groups, such as Not Dead Yet, which organized the brief in question.
As a result, the Society for Disability Studies withdrew its support for the brief and is taking no official stand on the Oregon dispute.
However, some scholars continue to think that it would have been appropriate for the society to have participated in the Supreme Court case. And leaders of the society strongly deny the charge that there is any sort of party line with regard to what disabilities scholars can say.
The issue, which has prompted flurries of e-mail exchanges and intense discussions among professors, is a sensitive one for the field. Disability studies is a hot interdisciplinary focus of research in academe, involving scholars who study legal, medical and social issues, as well as professors who look at the history of people with disabilities and how they are portrayed in literature and the arts.
Many scholars in the field have disabilities or have family members with disabilities. And there is a strong sense of activism for many in the discipline because nearly all of its members — including people on both sides of the Oregon dispute — agree that people with disabilities regularly confront bigotry and people who would deny them control over their lives.
Add in the fact that assisted suicide reminds many people of Nazi-sponsored eugenics and you have a combustible situation.
Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, an associate professor of women’s studies at Emory University and the co-editor of Disability Studies: Enabling the Humanities, says that one irony of the debate is that the rationale for assisted suicide and the rationale behind the positions of groups like Not Dead Yet can be viewed as “quite similar” in that both are focused on “the right to control one’s body.”
One of the professors who raised objections about the society’s role in the case was Lennard J. Davis, a professor of English at the University of Illinois at Chicago and the author of numerous books and articles about disability, including a highly praised memoir about being raised as the hearing son of deaf parents.
When Davis first heard about the scholarly society signing the brief, he said, he was surprised that there had been no discussion about it. Davis said that the Modern Language Association, for example, has specific procedures for seeking member input before taking public stands. And after Davis started raising questions about the brief, he said that leaders of the society discovered bylaws that might have been violated in signing on to the brief.
Davis said that he was pleased that the board of the society had withdrawn its support from the brief. But he said that the dispute raised broader issues about the field, in which he has been an activist, helping to found the MLA’s Committee on Disability Issues and the Profession, for example. Many of the founders of disability studies, Davis said, “cut their teeth on issues around euthanasia so it has come to be an almost binding rule that if you are in disability studies, you will oppose physician assisted suicide.”
Such a rule, Davis said, is “appalling” in academe. “There is an enforced conspiracy of silence that makes it difficult to speak out in favor of physician assisted suicide for fear of being seen as being against people with disabilities. I can do it because my job is secure, but many junior folks and grad students have told me that they would support my position but they are afraid. Ditto for even some of the most well known people in the field.”
To be clear, Davis and others are absolutely not in favor of euthanasia and are outspoken in criticizing the medical establishment generally for taking too many decisions away from people with disabilities.
But privately, some disability scholars say that the Oregon law should be viewed as a reasonable way to help some people with terminal illnesses who wish to avoid the pain of certain diseases that will soon take their lives. Given the protections against the Oregon law being used against anyone who does not want to end his or her life, they say that the measure need not be viewed as an attack on people with disabilities.
The brief that the society briefly endorsed does say explicitly that assisted suicide is an attack on people with disabilities. The brief signatories wrote that their “experience as people with disabilities is that the false assumption that suicide is a rational solution to the barriers and discrimination they face devalues them as human beings and sanctions their unequal treatment under law.”
James Ferris, president of the society and a faculty associate in communication arts at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, said that he continues to back the brief personally. “It makes a very compelling argument,” he said.
He said that he supported the decision to withdraw support for the brief because of the “lack of clarity” about how the society could take a stand on a Supreme Court case. Ferris said that he appreciated the view that some sort of participatory process was needed before a scholarly group took a public stand. But he also said he feared that creating a long process could effectively mean that the society would stay out of court cases, since requests to join a brief are frequently made under tight deadlines.
It would be a shame, he said, if disability studies professors couldn’t take united stands on some issues. “Part of our mission is to have an impact on the world,” he said.
Ferris strongly rejected the assertion that there are any ideological tests imposed on people in the field. “We have people who agree on some issues and who disagree on others, as you’d expect,” he said. “We have plenty of room for people who hold a wide range of perspectives.”
The idea that scholars would have their views excluded would be particularly wrong for disability studies, he said, “because our fundamental idea is promoting inclusion.”
One academic group — the Center on Human Policy, Law, and Disability Studies, at Syracuse University — is still publicly supporting the brief filed by Not Dead Yet. Steven Taylor, co-director of the center and coordinator of disability studies at Syracuse, said that there were several reasons to be involved in the case.
“People with disabilities are extremely vulnerable when physician assisted suicide is sanctioned,” he said. He said that many people in the public confuse “end of life care” and “life sustaining care” in ways that can encourage them to view people with disabilities as not deserving of medical treatment that keeps them alive. Physicians “share cultural attitudes toward people with disabilities held by other members of society and often make ‘quality of life’ determinations when deciding on whether or not to provide care,” Taylor added.
He also said that people who study and promote disability rights “cannot forget the societal attempts to eliminate disability through involuntary sterilization — tens of thousands of people with disabilities were involuntarily sterilized up until the 1950s and 60s and perhaps later — restrictive marriage laws, and other policies and practices.”
Emory’s Garland-Thomson said that history does play a role in how people with disabilities and scholars familiar with history view the Oregon situation. While she did not equate Oregon’s policies with the euthanasia practiced in Nazi Germany, Garland-Thomson said that “the same kind of rhetoric” has been used in both cases. She also said that many people do not realize just how vulnerable people with disabilities have been — and continue to be — to those who do not consider their lives to have value.
Garland-Thomson, whose term on the board of the disability studies society recently ended, said that she personally “leaned toward” supporting the views expressed in the Not Dead Yet brief. But she said that she didn’t think the society had any choice but to withdraw its support, given the procedural issues that were raised.
She also noted that there were really two questions at play: the Oregon approach and the question of whether the society should weigh in. It is possible, she said, to oppose physician assisted suicide and still have qualms about the society getting involved in the case.
The debate that has grown out of the discussion is healthy for the field, she said. While Garland-Thomson said that she was not certain herself that people were reluctant to speak out in ways that differ on the issue of assisted suicide, she said she was concerned “by the belief of some that they face pressure to think in certain political ways and that if you do not, you are not a good disabled person.”
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Comments
As a person with a disability, as someone who researches the development of college students with disability, as someone who just spent the last 18 months helping in the care of a parent who had ALS and wanted nothing more than to end her life, and as a former resident of Oregon who voted for the assisted suicide act...
my views on this have gotten more complex. I believe the issue is that of choice — who controls one’s body. Yes, messages sent to people with disabilities about their worth (or lack of it) are real. Yes, members of the medical fields also absorb those messages. But there are ways to ensure that any decision made to end a life is that of the person whose life it is. Those controls are critical, but I believe they are possible.
Having watched my mother live a life that she hated, that she could not end herself because of the disease (she lost use of her hands fairly early), I see absolutely no reason why it should have been illegal for any of us as her family, or her physicians, to have helped her to end her life, if that is what she so chose, given extensive evaluation to see that it was not a consequence of treatable depression. Her life was not going to get better; in fact, it was certain it would get worse. Her response was not to societally constructed barriers, but to her own conception of what a meaningful life looked like. Maybe in a better world she would have developed a different conception of what a meaningful life was, and I support efforts to redefine that in ways more inclusive of people with disabilities. Much of my research focuses on that. However, my mother didn’t live in that world. In her world, her life had no value, and she hated every minute of it.
While I actually disagreed with her assessment (I thought her life had far more value than she did, at least until the last few weeks, [and I won’t horrify anyone with the details, but know they were horrifying]), I remain ashamed I didn’t help her end her life, and incensed that it would have been illegal for me to have done so.
Ellen, Assistant Professor at Bowling Green State University, at 1:00 pm EDT on October 5, 2005
The late Hugh Gallagher — a quad who wrote a great book about eugenics in Nazi Germany ("Hitler’s Willing Executioners") — was a firm advocate for the right of disabled people to make their own decisions, including the decision to hasten certain death.
One of the things that AUTONOMY’s surveys have indicated is that far more people with disabilities support aid in dying than the leadership of disability rights groups will admit. ————————————————————-http://www.thebody.com/cid/issue15/hugh.html
Disabled Rights Activist Advocates for Aid-in-Dying
By Hugh Gallagher Spring 2001
This is an excerpt of a speech delivered at the three campuses of the University of Alaska.
I am a severely disabled man. At the age of 19, I contracted polio, which left me paralyzed from the chest down. I have used a wheelchair ever since. As a founding member of the disability rights movement, I authored what became the Architectural Barriers Act of 1968 in Alaska — to my knowledge, the first legislation to acknowledge the civil rights of disabled people ever passed, anywhere. I have been active in the movement throughout my adult life.
I am also a member of the National Board of Compassion in Dying (CID), an organization that seeks to ensure that patients, as they approach the end of life, retain control over their bodies and their lives — their personal autonomy — until the end. CID holds that a person at the end stage of terminal disease has a moral right to compassion, counseling, hospice care, full and adequate pain medication, and, should this be his/her considered desire, physician assistance in obtaining the medication necessary to control the manner and means of his dying.
As an elderly disabled man, I see my disabled friends dying as disease overtakes their worn out bodies. It is my own firm conviction that persons with disabilities have much wisdom and insight to inject into the public debate over end of life care and physician assistance in dying. We know — as able-bodied people do not — that “quality of life” bears no relation to bedpans and wheelchairs. It is not about losing your ability to play tennis or go to the bathroom by yourself. It is bigger than that: quality of life is found in self worth, personal autonomy, the love of oneself and others.
I believe that every human being has a God-given right to control what is to be done — or not done — to his or her body. This right to choose extends from birth to death, across the entire span of life. Friends, family, physicians, clergy, society have a right to educate and counsel the person on alternatives and outcomes, but the decision itself belongs to the individual involved. “Nothing about me, without me,” is the slogan of ADAPT, the disability activist group. This personal autonomy, the very basis of disability rights, most surely does not diminish at the end of life.
The moral issue assisted dying presents can be stated in two ways: Should the suffering patient have the right to end life when recovery is impossible. Or, Should the physician have the authority to end such a life if so requested.
Whether you approach assisted dying the first way or the second way directly influences how you see the issue. I see it the first way, as a matter of patients’ rights. As a disabled person who has fought for my civil rights I see assisted dying as a matter of personal autonomy. I make the decisions. While I do not believe that I would ever make use of assisted dying, I believe it would be a comfort and support, knowing that it is available.
There is some evidence to indicate that most disabled people feel this way. A Harris Poll, taken in 1995, reported that 66 percent of disabled Americans support the option of assisted suicide for persons in severe pain in the terminal stage of disease. This support is six percent stronger than that of Americans as a whole. Fewer than 20 percent of disabled people oppose physician-assisted dying.
The promise of individual liberty and personal autonomy as spelled out in the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights has been repeatedly ratified and affirmed over the last generation by the courts, the Congress and the state legislatures. People with disabilities now hold these rights of citizenship equally and irrevocably — as do all American citizens, able-bodied and disabled alike. Disabled people have the right, as they exercise and demand the right, to control their bodies, their lives and their destinies. I for one, treasure this liberty above all things and I do not intend to let it go as I pass through the end stage of my life on earth.
Dr. Gallagher is a well-known scholar, writer and disability rights activist. A person with polio quadriplegia since 1952, Dr. Gallagher has fought for the civil rights of disabled people for almost 40 years. Dr. Gallagher is also one the world’s foremost experts on the atrocities committed against people with disabilities by the Nazi regime. A prolific writer and commentator on a variety of topics, Dr. Gallagher most recently has concentrated on issues of medical ethics as they relate to disability.
jmg, at 1:01 pm EDT on October 5, 2005
Concern
It concerns me a bit that professors are waiting for the MLA to tell them what to think, rather than standing up for their own convictions (outside the classroom I hope). This debate has two rather reasonable sides and it would be a shame if organizations dominate the discussion by encouraging their members to toe their line.
Kevin, Undergraduate, at 1:02 pm EDT on October 5, 2005
Whose rift?
From my perspective of several years in the Disablity Studies field, and from co-editing a recently published journal issue on end of life issues and people with disabilities, I have noted that most people in the Disability Studies field who are opposed to physician assisted suicide tend to have an air of defensiveness about their point of view.
This is, I think, precisely because most people in Disability Studies are liberal/progressive folks who pretty much support the idea of choice in abortion, gay rights, opposition to the Iraq war, and other important issues in the so-called culture wars. Therefore, when they find themselves questioning the “rightness” of physician assisted suicide (which many liberals tend to frame as a question of choice over coercion, with liberals promoting anything that seems to increase one’s “choices") they find themselves questioning the very foundation of their beliefs that Lennard Davis thinks are somehow hegemonic.
Far from it: those opposing PAS have to overcome the general liberal thinking that they have as well as that of their colleagues.
So, in a strange way, Lennard Davis’ cry that anti-PAS people have been hogging the limelight is easy to make. It plays into the fears of the mostly liberal and progressive that, somehow, they are not being “right” in their thinking. I don’t think that Davis intends this; I think he is being absolutely honest in his analysis.
He is still wrong.
Timothy Lillie, at 1:03 pm EDT on October 5, 2005
Donnell, I don’t want to break it to you and your legions of employees at “the cracked door” but most debates will never end. I realize this might come as a shock to you, but over 2000 years from the birth of a man many consider to be the messiah there is considerable debate about the nature of a supreme deity and whether he exists. Likewise over 200 years from the drafting of the bill of rights there exists considerable debate as to what most of it means, and the number of cert. petitions before the court does not seem to be decreasing, and concepts of “federalism” are still subject to legal debate. I am sorry that we cannot offer you easy answers at this time, but I would urge you to look harder for easy answers in the future.
Larry, at 1:03 pm EDT on October 5, 2005
Constant Debate with No Possible Resolution
This comment is in response to the post made by Larry.
Thanks for directly addressing me and commenting on my post.
I actually agree with you. There will always be debate and human beings have a right to an opinion.
However, when does it end? Every side of this issue is strong. Those for death by choice have valid reasons. Those for outlawing euthanasia also have valid reasons.
Are we going to keep throwing our reasons at each other for years until another generation arises? Then do we expect them to throw the same arguments at each other and should the cycle continue?
There must be some moral standard that can settle even the most difficult issues and that’s where we have a choice.
Life really does not have to be so complicated. Why not pick your moral standard and stick with your position? If we do that, we would stop arguing about equally important facts and make it an ethical issue?
Regards, Donnell Duncan, President and Founder, The Cracked Door, “If the Door is Cracked, the Door is Open”
Donnell, Civil Engineering (Structures) Graduate at Georgia Instititute of Technology, at 6:01 pm EDT on October 5, 2005
I am shocked that any disabled person who has fought courageously for the autonomy of persons should believe that as an autonomous person I should not have the right to end my life in order to avoid suffering and pain (and to avoid the indignity of dying while hooked up to invasive tubes and monitors) should these prospects come to pass.
The Oregon ‘Death with Dignity’ law is not a law which condones, permits, or will lead to euthanasia. It is a law about personal choice, not state (or physician) intervention. It is about end of life choice, freely made.
None of those who have posted about it so far seem to have read it. They can do so at
http://egov.oregon.gov/DHS/ph/pas/ors.shtml
Robert, Assisted suicide is not ‘euthanasia’, at 6:02 pm EDT on October 5, 2005
To Lay a Hand on Oneself...
It seems to me that this is a question of the ability of individuals to make choices concerning their own bodies. Certainly, access to assisted suicide may color my decision to end my own life, but I steadfastly object to arguments that purport to value life while at the same time telling us how we ought to live it.
Unfortunately, many who want to end their lives are pathologized. This only demonstrates the inability of many to see that different people hold different ideas of what a good life is. In our current health-obsessed culture, we consistently deny people who engage in so called self-destructive behaviors rational faculties. In fact, it might be the case that our obsession with health is the result of a society and economic organization that values only the productiveness of human beings and no the rich complexities of what it means to live one’s own life. After all—not to add yet another useless Hitler analogy—National Socialism placed a graet deal of importance on the well-cut, athletic, and healthy physical form. Our obsession with fitness and our pathology of those who do not conform to our view of a meaningful life is scarily reflective of this tendency in Nazi ideology. Please, let people make their own decisions!
Benjamin Schacht, Undergraduate Philosophy Major at Trinity College, at 6:20 pm EDT on October 5, 2005
Benjamin rightly says that ‘this is a question of the ability of individuals to make choices concerning their own bodies.’
I don’t follow him though when he writes,’Unfortunately, many who want to end their lives are pathologized. This only demonstrates the inability of many to see that different people hold different ideas of what a good life is.’
If this means that those who have chosen physician-assisted suicide under Oregon law are reviled or said to be in some pathological mental state, it is false. False, that is, for those who have gathered peaceably and lovingly to say goodbye to a dying family member who has chosen to end his or her life in this way. Many of the few who have chose death with dignity under this law have given rational, coherent, dignified, and moving statements beforehand. No one seeing or hearing them could believe that they were ‘pathological’ in any meaningful sense.
Once again, references to the Nazis’ attempted cultivation of ideal human types and their attempts to eliminate ‘degenerate’ persons is unfortunate. Those ‘euthanized’ by the Nazis did not choose their deaths or the manner of them.
Robert, Once again…, at 7:49 pm EDT on October 5, 2005
Some possibly relevant excerpts from the Oregon statute regarding death with dignity (asterisks added):
127.805 s.2.01. Who may initiate a written request for medication.
(1) An adult who is capable, is a resident of Oregon, and has been determined by the attending physician and consulting physician to be suffering from a terminal disease, and who has voluntarily expressed his or her wish to die, may make a written request for medication for the purpose of ending his or her life in a humane and dignified manner in accordance with ORS 127.800 to 127.897.
(2) *No person shall qualify under the provisions of ORS 127.800 to 127.897 solely because of age or disability.* [1995 c.3 s.2.01; 1999 c.423 s.2]………
127.825 s.3.03. Counseling referral.If in the opinion of the attending physician or the consulting physician a patient may be suffering from a psychiatric or psychological disorder or depression causing impaired judgment, either physician shall refer the patient for counseling. *No medication to end a patient’s life in a humane and dignified manner shall be prescribed until the person performing the counseling determines that the patient is not suffering from a psychiatric or psychological disorder or depression causing impaired judgment.* [1995 c.3 s.3.03; 1999 c.423 s.4]
Robert, excerpts, at 8:39 pm EDT on October 5, 2005
The best thing to come out of this debate is that it has become abundantly clear that it is possible to debate this issue within the disability studies community. It should be pointed out that Professor Davis was given the keynote address at this summer’s SDS annual meeting to make his case in favor of the Oregon law. Davis had a proxy read his paper for him, perhaps because he feared being tarred and feathered. People spoke with a great deal of passion at SDS; this is a matter of life and death. But there was strong emotion expressed on both sides of the issue.
The case for PAS is easy enough to make as a simple extension of the liberal principle of autonomy. Many disability activists have said they would support legal assistance for suicide if it were being presented as a universal human right of the liberal subject. It should not be that hard to understand the objections to putting the provision of death under the administration of the medical system and reserving this measure only for people with physical impairments.
Brian Zimmerman, graduate student at University of Illinois-Chicago, at 4:37 am EDT on October 6, 2005
Disability & Death with Dignity — we are not of one mind
As illustrated by the comments preceding this one, the disability community is made up of different people with different perspectives on this issue. I, myself, am a T6-7 Para after an SCI eleven years ago, and Diane Coleman and NDY do not speak for me. In fact, many of the disability organizations filing against Oregon in this case do not speak for the disability community either.
Polling data,when properly indexed for disability status, in Florida, Vermont and California has shown that the majority of the disabiility community agrees with the population at large. They want to have a compassionate choice at life’s end with the assistance of their physician, so long as proper safeguards are observed.
I had the great good fortune to briefly work with Drew Battavia and Hugh Gallagher, the founders of AUTONOMY, before their deaths. I am pleased to tell this list that AUTONOMY has been revived to provide a voice in this debate for what the maority of us believe, that it is my life, my disability, my death and it should be my choice!
I was in the Supreme Court this morning for the oral argument in Gonzales v. Oregon. The concerns being discussed here were not part of the case but this simply reinforced for me the need to pursue this choice through the legislative arena.
I welcome all to visit AUTONOMY’s website and to support our work if they agree with us — www.autonomynow.org
More importantly, I invite all to become active in expressing their views on this important issue, to get involved in the political process and to help us pass laws that protect persons in the disability community from the abuses that NDY and others fear, abuses that do not occur in Oregon but can easily be committed where end of life care is not openly discussed and closely regulated.
Paul A. Spiers, Ph.D.,, President, Board of Directors at AUTONOMY, Inc., at 4:37 am EDT on October 6, 2005
I invite Professor Davis to actually attend the conference of the Society for Disability Studies. He might find a greater plurality of voices and views than he thinks.
SDS member, at 11:25 am EDT on October 6, 2005
I’ve been hearing the complaint for some time that disabled people would express more support for assisted suicide if they weren’t afraid of bucking the disability rights “party line.” I led a pilot study that sheds some light on this (Gill, C.J. & Voss, L. A. [2005]. Views of disabled people regarding legalized assisted suicide before and after a balanced informational presentation. Journal of Disability Policy Studies, 16[1], 6-15). We recruited a sample of persons with disabilities from widely varying backgrounds and provided a way for them to indicate their views on assisted suicide in complete anonymity. Even when they knew that their views could not be linked to their identity, the majority clearly opposed assisted suicide for people with non-terminal but incurable disabilities. The sample was more evenly split on assisted suicide for terminally ill people, but we found interesting “effects” for race/ethnicity, gender, and disability type. Support for legalized assisted suicide was associated with being white and male. In contrast, women and people of color were least likely to support assisted suicide, even for persons with terminal illnesses. The majority of people with multiple sclerosis (a disability type that some doctors feel should qualify for assisted suicide) opposed assisted suicide. We also found that increasing disabled people’s knowledge about assisted suicide appeared to slightly increase opposition. When we exposed our participants to balanced information from both proponents and opponents of assisted suicide, participants who changed their views were more likely to change toward opposition than toward support. The majority of all respondents believed that the legalization of assisted suicide would lead to involuntary deaths and discriminatory medical treatment.
Most polls on assisted suicide are not very rigorous in their sampling of disabled respondents. Many rely on convenience samples or telephone or online approaches that capture the most privileged segments of the disability community but fail to represent persons with severe impairments or communication disabilities, individuals living in group or institutional settings, and persons who are very poor. Some surveys even conflate responses of disabled respondents with responses of nondisabled family members. For example, Humphrey Taylor, chairman of the Harris Poll, told me that such conflation and sampling problems were present in the 1994 Harris survey that Hugh Gallagher and others have cited as evidence of the disability community’s support of assisted suicide. Taylor concluded that it is “not correct to report data on people with disabilities from the 1994 poll.”
Many disability rights activists who now oppose assisted suicide report that they intially supported it because that seemed to be the progressive stance. As they listened carefully and critically to the pro-legalization arguments, reviewed the proposed policies, and studied the cases, however, they perceived sociopolitical danger in a “death with dignity” campaign cresting at a time of dwindling healthcare options for many. Lennard Davis and other proponents of legalized assisted suicide want to attribute the disability rights opposition to intimidation. This seems rather dismissive of the sophisticated critique many have adopted through rigorous and socially responsible analysis. In fact, the intimidation argument is beginning to smell like a red herring. Given what our study indicated about the impact of information on views toward assisted suicide and considering the opposition expressed by women and people of color, there may be another explanation for many disabled people’s opposition to legalization: perhaps they understand something about social oppression and the danger of assisted suicide that Professor Davis and other proponents don’t grasp.
Carol J. Gill, Ph.D., Associate Professor at University of Illinois at Chicago, at 12:23 pm EDT on October 6, 2005
Death with Dignity
to respond to the concern that conflates Oregon’s Death with Dignity Act with euthanasia and eugenics, there just seems to be a problem of pure ignorance here. As a resident of Oregon and a person who is chronically ill, just lost a dear friend of pancreatic cancer, and also studies disease and disability, I think that it is wonderful that the citizens of Oregon (yes, i claim to be one of them) recognize that the issue at the heart of Death with Dignity is that of choice. when my body dies on me, as an intelligent, conscious, cognizant human being, can i choose what to do with it and can i find a compassionate dr willing to help me? I’ve read at length in the archives of hearings that produced Oregon’s Death with Dignity Act and i think that threatening its validity and its purpose is morally wrong. Those suffering should have a choice. And i think the issue of choice is heard largely in the field of disability studies, not in the eugenics aspect but the tension between what happens when one’s body begins to die (speaking to those like Davis who think that disability studies presents only one voice/perspective). Michael Hyde a well known biomedical ethicist published an amazing book called The Call of Conscience a few years ago discussing the tension between the morality of physician assisted suicide, conscience, and choice. Ultimately, Hyde argues that the “choice” to die is essentially that — a choice that a cognizant person can make in the face of perilous illness and pain. I am proud to be a resident of Oregon and proud to know that others recognize the need for the choice to follow one’s conscience. can you honestly think that we are a compassionate, caring, progressive society if we cannot make the choice over our own bodies? Oregon’s Death with Dignity Act is just that — a choice to face death with dignity, it is not eugenics and those who conflate the two likely lack understanding of the true nature of choice and the importance of it when facing death and when disease strips you of all dignity.
Susanna Weinstein, Univ. of Wisconsin Madison, at 7:12 pm EDT on October 10, 2005
clarification
There has been some confusion over one of the placement of statements I am reported to have made in this article. To be clear, I am not saying that any person or group of people have actively taken steps to inhibit conversation or to threaten anyone’s job security or future ability to be hired. What I am saying is that there has been a conspiracy of silence within the disability community enforced by a disciplinary set of beliefs and knowledges which have made it very difficult for people to speak out about PAS without fearing to appear non-disability-studies-oriented. My information on this fear of speaking has come from numerous conversations with colleagues and students as well as many other e-mails received from members of the DS community. But I want to make it clear that what I’ve said is not an indictment of any individual person or group of people in disability studies.
Lennard Davis, Professor at University of Illinois at Chicag, at 4:25 pm EDT on October 19, 2005
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© Copyright 2008 Inside Higher Ed
Everlasting Debate over Euthanasia
This debate will never end. It would be a great surprise if one day, people start agreeing on euthanasia.
Each person will continue to take a position on the issue based on his/her personal convictions.
Nonetheless, is there some moral standard that can help us form a good frame of reference?
I believe there is, and people can choose to adhere to it if they want to simplify the argument.
Can a human being choose to end his/her own life? Yes or no! We don’t want to know the circumstances or conditions because each individual should be given an equal opportunity to live!
If the answer is no, then the debate is over!
Regards,
Donnell Duncan
Founder and President
The Cracked Door
“If the Door is Cracked, the Door is Open”
Donnell, Civil Engineering (Structures) Graduate at Georgia Instititute of Technology, at 5:49 am EDT on October 5, 2005