A feminist case against self-determined dying in assisted suicide and euthanasia.

Familiar clarion calls for choice, autonomy, and the moral right to control one's own body ring forth in current movements to legalize physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia. In the United States dedicated activists, some physicians and certain respected ethicists make a moral case for the right to assisted suicide and euthanasia in order to control how and when one dies. (1) Feminists and other members of society must now confront the dilemma of whether this new liberty would contribute to human flourishing and well-being. More specifically, would women in particular benefit from more choices at the end of life?

Women have for so long been denied full autonomy and respect in our society that it might be tempting for feminists to immediately endorse a social measure purporting to increase women's freedom of choice. But at the same time feminists have learned to exercise a "hermeneutics of suspicion" and be cautious when new social or medical interventions are on offer. Proposals for increasing personal choices which initially look positive can result in unforeseen drawbacks and dangerous side effects--especially when medical technologies are involved. One only has to think of recent intra-feminist debates surrounding reproductive technologies, hormonal therapies, abortion, surrogate motherhood, no-fault divorce, pornography, prostitution, alimony, child custody and employment practices, to name but a few. (2) In the face of so much controversy the valid question arises as to whether there is any consensus to be found among feminists, and if so what would characterize a feminist critique of assisted suicide and euthana sia?

Pluralism and Consensus in Feminism

While there has as not yet been a feminist debate over euthanasia, it is easy to point out an ever increasing pluralism in the feminist movement over many other issues, including the nature of feminism. Turning to collections of feminist writings in many disciplines one finds diversity on display. In a comprehensive compilation of essays devoted to feminism and philosophy, for instance, there are sections devoted to perspectives on feminism described as liberal, Marxist, radical, psychoanalytic, socialist, ecological, phenomenological and postmodern. (3) In religious and theologically oriented feminism one finds another wide-ranging variety of feminist approaches growing out of different theological and faith traditions. A recent review of Christian theological literature even includes a sampling of post-Christian feminism work. (4) Different ethnic and geographical groups of women, such as Hispanic or Asian women, also have developed their own specific approaches to feminism. (5)

Can any consensus or commonality in all of these diverse manifestations of feminism be found? Yes, I think it can be said that while a thousand flowers bloom, feminism is not self-destructing through fragmentation, but enjoying a dynamic pluralism. All forms of feminism are constituted by a critique of a status quo in which power is abused by unjust gender discriminations against women. (6) A critical feminist analysis will recognize, protest and demand an end to gender subordination and exclusion; women should no longer be excluded from discourse defining themselves or their roles, or have their voices suppressed in the decision-making of male-dominated societies. Feminism is always and everywhere a call for justice and social change on behalf of women's well-being and human flourishing.

But when it comes to a more detailed analysis of what has contributed to women's oppression, or to ideals of human flourishing, or to recommendations for strategic policies to effect social change, then pluralism and disagreements emerge. A general critique held in common and an agreed-upon global goal can be supported by a variety of fundamental principles, analyses and assumptions, especially when it comes to proposals for reform. After all, feminist thinkers come to feminism historically formed by a plethora of subcultures, ideologies and belief systems, as well as from different intellectual disciplines. Those affirming psychoanalytic thought, for instance, will focus on different variables and recommend different social strategies for change than feminists employing a neo-Marxist class analysis. Obviously, different feminists will appropriate different dimensions of several sets of complex traditions and create different intellectual configurations of argument when confronting any new challenge. My own a rguments here against assisted suicide and euthanasia will represent a personal synthesis of my experiences as an aging, white, middle-class, married, American woman and mother, educated as a social psychologist.

In my reading of feminism, it appropriates and affirms the importance of concrete contexts and the different perspectives or standpoints of embodied participants in any encounter. Feminists have rightly attempted to make explicit what has too often been ignored-- i.e., the social and dynamic developmental realities of actual human lives. Human beings must be born, nurtured, reared, domestically maintained and cared for when they are ill, old or dying. A unique individual self can only be formed within social matrixes of interpersonal relationships; the self is partly created by ongoing self-other dialogues. Each adult person continues to live within embodied, embedded and interpersonal relationships. Inevitably, the private and the personal interact with public and political actions because no one can live or work without receiving domestic and emotional support. These hidden tasks of nurturing and maintenance have usually been assigned to women, then denigrated and accorded little recognition or reward. (7)