DIALOGUE: Death, Dignity and Doctors

What is a Good Enough Life?
By Ynestra King

FROM A PACIFIST PERSPECTIVE, the measure of "better" or "worse" in relation to social policies is the extent to which they contribute to, or deter, violence. But when one takes into consideration a complex definition of violence that includes systems of oppression and exploitation of all kinds, the pursuit of a "pacifist position" on any particular issue is bound to yield more than one possible conclusion. There is no pacifist orthodoxy. In fact, one might even say that the very idea of a "pacifist orthodoxy" is an oxymoron. What there is pacifist discussion and dialogue that are open-ended and reflective, in which a recognition of the provisionality, fallibility and necessary ambiguity of this conversation is recognized.

Progressives, including pacifists, generally support the legalization of assisted suicide. This support starts with the questionable assumption that the person wishing to end his/her life has made an autonomous "free" choice to die that should be respected as an individual right.

Yet it seems to me that pacifists, of all people, should be taking note of the social and cultural context in which these "choices" are being made. What is a good enough life? What is a useful life? Who decides?

The Nazis began their extermination with people deemed to be leading "useless lives." They argued that it was an act of humanity to put these people out of their misery. Two of the principal reasons people give for requesting assisted suicide is that they can’t bear the pain, or they are worried about being a burden on their families if they are functionally compromised or in need of help or care in a society with dwindling social supports. But these issues, among others, need to be more closely investigated than they have been in most discussions I have followed, including the recent arguments at the Supreme Court.

Even the pain issue, much as it plucks at the heartstrings, is not so simple. According to preeminent pain researcher Kathy Foley, many people who claim that their pain is so great that they want to die, decide that they want to live once their pain is relieved. Yet although the technologies that could provide this relief exist and are not even that expensive, they are not widely available.

Beyond technology, there are very troublesome, relatively unexamined assumptions in our society as to what is a "useful life" or a "life worth living" that are extremely offensive to people living with disabilities and chronic illness. This is yet another one of the paradoxes of our productivist society: As it becomes possible for more people to survive catastrophic illnesses and injuries, the political climate has become more hostile to people who must depend on their fellow human beings for support.

Another troubling piece of this issue is that these debates are taking place in the context of the corporatization of medicine, where health care is profit driven, and a climate of ruthlessness and indifference has become the norm. Physicians have buckled to their managed-care bosses and medical managers whose sole purpose is to maximize profits for their shareholders. Physician-assisted suicide is the most cost-effective form of managed care. In the new climate of profiteering medicine, this is a dangerous slippery slope.

The issue of "assisted suicide" takes pacifists to the heart of what is currently difficult and uncertain for us: our traditional loyalty to individual liberty, based on an ideal of separation and autonomy and a hearty distrust of the state, versus a contextual analysis, where the focus is on the field of social conditions in which individual choices must be made.

DIALOGUE: Death, Dignity and Doctors, Part 1: A Simple, Basic Right

[War Resisters League Website] [Nonviolent Activist Index]
March-April 1997: [Gulf Coverup Radicalizes Vets] [A Simple, Basic Right] [What is a Good Enough Life?] [Postcards from Belgrade] [Activist News] [War Facts]

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