Examining the Foreseeable: Assisted Suicide as a Herald of Changing Moralities
| Published date | 01 June 2001 |
| DOI | 10.1177/a017399 |
| Date | 01 June 2001 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
EXAMINING THE FORESEEABLE:
ASSISTED SUICIDE AS A HERALD
OF CHANGING MORALITIES
JOANE MARTEL
University of Alberta, Canada
ABSTRACT
After her intense battle for the decriminalization of assisted suicide in the Supreme
Court of Canada, Sue Rodriguez committed suicide with medical assistance in 1994.
Following her suicide, government and law representatives remained silent and no
criminal charges were ever brought against the person(s) who presumably assisted Ms
Rodriguez in her death. This apparent non-intervention of criminal law is examined
in view of the useful role that the Rodriguez event may have played in a possible shift
in the dominant morality. It is argued that the Rodriguez assisted suicide may have
been a useful ‘crime’ (in the Durkheimian sense) in that it brought to the fore the
possibility that social conditions – which made the ‘crime’ possible – may no longer
be in harmony with conventional morality. Similarly to Socrates’ crime, the Rodriguez
case can be seen as an anticipation of a new morality. It can be analysed as a prelude
to alterations, as directly preparing the way for changes in the dominant morality. The
role of criminal law as a preferred mode of moral regulation is also examined in
relation to the moral demands and expectations that arose during as well as after the
judicial saga.
INTRODUCTION
COMMON LAW countries and several European states are currently
witnessing a resurgence in the public arena of issues related to
euthanasia. So far, these issues have been predominantly problema-
tized within juridical, medical or ethical frameworks (separately or in a
combination thereof, e.g. bioethics). On the other hand, euthanasia issues
have been largely understudied within sociologically oriented frameworks.
The discipline of sociology has only recently produced a small number of
studies on these questions, the majority of which are embedded in social
history frameworks (Anderson, 1987; Cohen, 1988; MacDonald and Murphy,
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1990; Van Hooff, 1990; Marra and Orrù, 1991), in a sociology of law (Durand,
1985; Martel, 1998) or in a sociology of actors (Hoffman and Webb, 1981).
However, sociological inquiries into euthanasia are warranted given that the
present public debate surrounding it is linked to important current societal
transformations, among which are biomedical breakthroughs that prolong
human life, financial constraints in health care, the increasing disorientation
and search for new social references as well as political and moral values, the
affirmation of individualism, the redefinition of private and public spheres,
and neoliberal trends. As a matter of fact, euthanasia is increasingly posing
problems to a society which is becoming progressively more fragmented on
an ethicopolitical level.
It is not surprising then to find that the term ‘euthanasia’ is often used
rather indiscriminately or incorrectly in the literature. For a long time now,
scholars in ethics have distinguished between two morally different forms of
euthanasia. The first, passive euthanasia, involves allowing the death process
to follow its natural course by omitting to dispense or by discontinuing life-
sustaining medical treatment. The second form, active euthanasia, involves
deliberately and painlessly accelerating the death of a person suffering from
an incurable or terminal illness, with his or her consent, usually by adminis-
tering a drug. Recently, another distinction has been added to the basic one
above by medical ethics. It involves differentiating between voluntary
euthanasia – upon the request and consent of a person – and involuntary
euthanasia – without the person’s request or informed consent (Doucet,
1990). This sophisticated semantic categorization is far from gathering con-
sensus among scholars or among proponents and opponents to euthanasia.
In actuality, it seriously clouds current debates.
Moreover, other conceptual derivatives, such as mercy killing, palliative
care, medically assisted death or assisted suicide, have engendered even more
misunderstandings or misinterpretations. Of particular importance to this
article is the lack of consensus as to what terminology to use when certain
negative connotations – often associated with the term euthanasia – may
want to be avoided. One obvious example is the contested definition of
assisted suicide, especially physician-assisted suicide. This act involves the
provision, by a medical doctor, of a means to enable a patient to commit
suicide. Physician-assisted suicide is usually perceived to be different from
assisted suicide, which is often used to refer to the participation in a person’s
suicide of an individual other than a medical doctor. In current debates,
euthanasia and assisted suicide are frequently regarded as being qualitatively
different. Euthanasia is usually used to refer to the hastening of one’s death
by a third party while in assisted suicide the act of death is ultimately per-
formed by the person who expressed a wish to commit suicide. In this article
I refer to euthanasia and assisted suicide as separate entities in order to
clearly demarcate the differences usually attributed to each of them in
current debates.
In the last few years in Canada, euthanasia and assisted suicide have been
socially constructed as ‘social problems’ that can be said to be the expression
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