Consenting to Assisted Death
A Response to John Kleinig
I am of the position that people should be able to consent to an assisted death because our bodies should be treated as belonging to us and not to others. Essentially, I uphold the value of self-ownership. Some opposed to assisted death push back against this value by arguing that we shouldn’t accept consent for an assisted death. This is what John Kleinig has to say:
Can we find some consent-limiting reason why, if we should not, we should not allow Dr. Kevorkian and others to have their consented-to way? I sketch a final, very brief and provocative reason, for thinking that consent is not enough. It is that permitting people to carry out the self-injurious requests of others is to legitimate a breakdown of the communal bonds that enable both human life to be worth living and such human well-being as we are capable of to be worth having. It is to give in to and to sanction the fragmentation of relations that has so denuded a life of a sense of worthwhileness that its extinction is deemed desirable. I am not claiming that such a life has not become unworthwhile to its bearer, but that we ought not to legitimate that by permitting the kind of assisted suicide that is made accessible via Dr. Kevorkian’s techniques. In Brian Clark’s Whose Life Is It, Anyway? we see not only the claims of individual self-determination pitted against powers that would limit them, but also a disintegration of the personal bonds that might well have enabled a chronically debilitated life to flourish in new and creative ways.
I am not of course arguing that consent, when taken in conjunction with other factors, such as imminent death, unrelievable pain, and so on is never sufficient, but only that a community that takes human well-being seriously cannot sanction the easy availability of machines that testify to its neglect. (p. 64)
Response
Let’s split this excerpt into separate parts and analyze them one by one.
First, Kleinig states, “permitting people to carry out the self-injurious requests of others is to legitimate a breakdown of the communal bonds that enable both human life to be worth living and such human well-being as we are capable of to be worth having.”
This suggests that Kleinig believes there has been a breakdown of the communal bonds that enable human life to be worth living in societies where assisted death is allowed. Does this mean that life is less worth living in California than it is in Ohio for that reason? If that’s the implication, then this seems implausible. If that’s not the implication, then I’m not sure what he means. Ultimately, I suspect that there’s no noticeable difference in the worthiness of living in California after assisted suicide was legalized.
To be clear, I don’t deny the importance of communal bonds or community in a full human life, but I do question how much allowing people to consent to their deaths breaks down this good.
Furthermore, I don’t see why such a position wouldn’t equally apply to the case of withholding and withdrawing life-sustaining care. One could make the argument that allowing the hastening of death via withholding and withdrawing breaks down the same communal bonds because it accepts that your life shouldn’t always be sustained. Permitting the practice of honoring refusals goes against the idea that we, as a society, believe that every life is worth living.
Second, he states, “I am not claiming that such a life has not become unworthwhile to its bearer, but that we ought not to legitimate that by permitting the kind of assisted suicide that is made accessible via Dr. Kevorkian’s techniques. In Brian Clark’s Whose Life Is It, Anyway? we see not only the claims of individual self-determination pitted against powers that would limit them, but also a disintegration of the personal bonds that might well have enabled a chronically debilitated life to flourish in new and creative ways.”
This excerpt is interesting. Kleinig seems to accept the possibility that life can be unworthwhile to a specific person, but he’s still against allowing assisted death because such a practice frustrates the possibility of said person having a life worth living.
Let’s elaborate on this by imagining a chronically sick person who is seeking an assisted death because they feel like a burden on their family. I think what Kleinig is saying is that if we allow assisted suicide in such a context, we are thereby legitimizing the idea that death is an acceptable means to avoid being a burden on others. And what we should be doing instead is collectively rejecting the idea that being dependent is something so terrifying as to make death desirable.
In response, I completely agree that we shouldn’t encourage people to feel like they’re burdens. Human beings, by nature, are interdependent. And everyone, at some point in their life, was or will be dependent on others. The notion of dependence should be normalized. However, that doesn’t mean consent is inapplicable in the case of assisted death. If I can consent to having my life support withdrawn because I feel like a burden, then consent should equally be allowed in the case of assisted death for the same reason.
Third, Kleinig states, “I am not of course arguing that consent, when taken in conjunction with other factors, such as imminent death, unrelievable pain, and so on is never sufficient, but only that a community that takes human well-being seriously cannot sanction the easy availability of machines that testify to its neglect.”
I’m a bit confused by this excerpt. I thought he was arguing that we shouldn’t consider consent sufficient in the context of assisted death, but here he explicitly states that it can be sufficient. This tells me that his focus is on the negative effects of allowing assisted death and not consent per se, which is fine.
The next thing that comes to mind when reading this passage is that he seems to assume death is necessarily bad for the person who dies. I, of course, don’t believe this, so I reject the claim that the easy availability of suicide machines goes against taking human well-being seriously. In fact, one of the main arguments in favor of allowing assisted death is that it reduces suffering.
Conclusion
Ultimately, if you believe in self-sovereignty, I don’t see how you wouldn’t accept the idea that someone can consent to their own death. If you own your body, if it belongs to you, then it seems like you should be able to consent to it.
If you don’t believe in self-sovereignty, then who owns your body? Society? No one? Everyone? And if you don’t believe in self-sovereignty, then why should people be allowed to make such important decisions about their lives? Why should I be able to decide who to marry and what career to pursue? Why should I be able to eat junk food and get a tattoo? Most importantly, why should I be able to refuse life-saving care? If it’s not my body, then what gives me that authority?
The answer that makes the most sense to me is that we do, in fact, own our bodies.