The impact of assisted suicide on persons with disabilities--is it a right without freedom?

A twenty-two year old woman, a student at a large state university, discovers she is pregnant. When she tells her boyfriend, he breaks off the relationship, saying that the pregnancy is her problem and responsibility. A solitary and private woman without many friends, she keeps the pregnancy a secret. Several weeks later, early in the first term, she has a miscarriage. She does not share her grief with anyone. At about the same time, the woman's mother informs her that her father has abandoned the family and is seeking a divorce. As a result, her parents cannot pay for the remainder of her college education. Without the financial support of her family, she will not be able to complete her schooling. The young woman's grades slip, creating more anxiety for her. Concerned about her future, about her financial situation, about her personal, family, and social life, the woman goes to the university health center and asks the physician on duty for a prescription of barbiturates. She tells the physician that she intends to kill herself. The physician speaks with the woman for a short while and concludes that she truly is despondent and voluntarily wants to take her own life. He prescribes the medication she requests; she leaves and kills herself. Although the above scenario is only hypothetical, there is general agreement among case law and medical ethical standards that the physician would have acted irresponsibly and even criminally.(1) Moreover, the general public's reaction would be one of sadness at the loss of a young person's life.(2) However, if the woman in the above hypothetical situation had a permanent disability, society's attitudes about the same suicide and the physician's assistance in the suicide would change dramatically.(3) There is a double standard between the value of the life of a person who is able-bodied and that of a person with a disability.(4) This double standard exists based upon society's prejudice against persons with disabilities. The current debate over a disabled person's "right to assisted suicide" reflects this prejudice.(5) The different attitudes society has about the death of a disabled person, as opposed to that of an able-bodied person, are rooted in the stigma associated with being disabled.(6) Many able-bodied persons are tremendously fearful about becoming disabled. This fear is based upon the notion that a disabled person's life is inferior to, and less precious than, an able-bodied person's life. Such stereotypes about persons with disabilities become reflected in very dangerous ways within the debate over an individual's right to assisted suicide. These biased perceptions about persons with disabilities have the impact of robbing them of their dignity, reinforcing their self-hatred, and making integration into American social and economic life more difficult. When society pities and fears persons with disabilities to the extent that suicide is considered a rational choice, it is difficult to expect that same society will have enough respect to treat such persons as truly equal. At the same historical moment in which a disabled person's civil rights are finally becoming recognized under federal law,(7) the right to die movement is reinforcing stereotypical notions about the "tragedy" of a disabled person's existence. The irony about assisted suicide is that concepts of personal autonomy, freedom, and dignity are used to empower persons with disabilities to kill themselves, rather than enabling them to live independent lives with dignity. Such basic civil rights concepts are turned on their heads to reinforce stereotypical roles leading to an acceptable and rational death for persons with disabilities, rather than to creating equal opportunity and independence. The debate over assisted suicide emphasizes "death with dignity" but ignores the possibility of granting dignity to the life of a person with a disability. In addition to encouraging society at large to regard suicide for a person with a disability as rational, such prejudices reinforce the alienation persons with disabilities themselves feel about the world around them. …