Putting the “Right to Die” in Its Place: Disability Rights and Physician-Assisted Suicide in the Context of US End-of-Life Care
Studies in Law, Politics, and Society
ISBN: 978-1-78756-208-0, eISBN: 978-1-78756-207-3
Publication date: 19 July 2018
Abstract
This article intervenes in the debate, among US disability rights advocates, about physician-assisted suicide (PAS). Through an ethnographic study, I situate this debate in the context of the dominant form of end-of-life care in the US hospice. Based on this analysis, I argue that PAS should be an issue of secondary concern to disability rights advocates, and that their primary concern, at the end-of-life, should be the improvement of US hospice care. By thus “putting the ‘right to die’ in its place,” they can achieve consensus among themselves and leverage this consensus to achieve the most substantial advancement of disability rights.
Keywords
Citation
Braswell, H. (2018), "Putting the “Right to Die” in Its Place: Disability Rights and Physician-Assisted Suicide in the Context of US End-of-Life Care", Sarat, A. (Ed.) Studies in Law, Politics, and Society (Studies in Law, Politics, and Society, Vol. 76), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 75-99. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1059-433720180000076005
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2018 Emerald Publishing Limited