Why I Burned My Book and Other Essays on Disability.

• Author: Longmore, Paul K.
• Position: Assisted suicide - Brief Article - Excerpt

Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2003; 800-621-2736.

From the chapter entitled "Elizabeth Bouvia, Assisted Suicide, and Social Prejudice": Reading through the literature of the suicide rights activists, one is struck by their willing acceptance of prejudicial assumptions about persons with disabilities. Disability renders its "victims" helpless and dependent. It robs them of the possibility of living meaningfully It makes them emotionally, physically, and financially burdensome to themselves, their families, and society One wades through reams of this suicide rights advocacy without finding any real acknowledgment of the intense social stigma and discrimination that segregate people with disabilities more than any other contemporary minority, deny them opportunities for education, employment, marriage, and family, rob them of social dignity and self-esteem, and inflict on many of them what can only be called "social death."

Proponents of legalizing assisted suicide for terminally ill persons argue that it need not lead inevitably down a slippery slope to...