What will be the effect on a society’s understanding of human life if it comes to see hastening one’s own death as a viable response to profound suffering and diminished capacity at life’s end? This is not a hypothetical question, but one that has become pressing given the legalization of physician-assisted suicide, or Medical Aid in Dying (MAiD), in a number of US states. These include the states where the two of us teach as professors of philosophy. Soon, Illinois and New York will become the twelfth and thirteenth states to allow physicians to write lethal prescriptions for terminally ill patients. When these laws take effect, more than one in three Americans will live in a jurisdiction where assisted suicide is legal.
Proponents of these laws, and of the practice of having medical professionals aid people in ending their lives, usually frame their arguments in the language of compassion and autonomy. They insist that patients with a terminal diagnosis should not be forced to suffer and ought to have control over the dying process. In the end, assisted suicide is supposedly about individual choice: Anyone who is against it doesn’t have to use it.