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3 books match the query 'Assisted suicide'

cover of Law at the End of Life: The Supreme Court and Assisted Suicide

Law at the End of Life

The Supreme Court and Assisted Suicide

Carl E. Schneider, Editor

University of Michigan Press, 2000

We live in a world in which courts crucially shape public policy through constitutional adjudication. This is a book written for that world. It brings together a group of distinguished scholars from many disciplines to examine the Supreme Court's recent decision that statutes prohibiting doctors from helping their patients commit suicide may be constitutional. It offers a guide to that decision and to the larger issues it raises for citizens and scholars alike. Law at the End of Life asks everyone's first question: What does the decision mean for today and tomorrow? It asks the lawyer's question: Is the Supreme Court's reasoning clear and convincing? It asks the doctor's question: How will the decision affect the decisions physicians make with their patients? It asks the ethicist's question: Will the decision conduce to wise and just decisions at the end of life? It asks the historian's question: How are we to understand the Court's work in light of our disturbing national experience with euthanasia? Ultimately, it asks the questions citizens need to ask in our new world: Is constitutional adjudication a good way to make public policy? Are courts well equipped -- with experience, with doctrine, with wisdom -- to make good policy? What role should courts have in making policy in a democracy? Has the Supreme Court made good public policy? What is the right policy for law at the end of life?
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cover of Understanding Assisted Suicide: Nine Issues to Consider

Understanding Assisted Suicide

Nine Issues to Consider

John B. Mitchell

University of Michigan Press, 2007

Assisted suicide remains one of the most emotionally charged and controversial topics—and the issue isn’t going away any time soon. As the baby boomer generation ages, many of us will watch as our parents—and ourselves—grow older, and wonder at the decisions that lie ahead.

Understanding Assisted Suicide provides both a fresh take on this important topic and the framework for intelligent participation in the discussion. Uniquely, the author frames the issue using his own experience watching both his parents die, which led him to ask fundamental questions about death, dying, religion, and the role of medicine and technology in alleviating human suffering.

In concerns about assisted suicide, each person’s “big picture” has largely been created out of picking and choosing from nine separate snapshot albums.

Understanding this offers a perspective for quickly determining the sources of another’s opinion on assisted suicide, as well as the issues they are not considering. Most importantly, Understanding Assisted Suicide offers a clear, easy-to-traverse landscape over which those who are sincerely looking for their own answers can navigate. The “nine-issue structure” allows both careful exploration of separate issues and a view of the full spectrum of ideas involved.

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cover of Undoing Suicidism: A Trans, Queer, Crip Approach to Rethinking (Assisted) Suicide

Undoing Suicidism

A Trans, Queer, Crip Approach to Rethinking (Assisted) Suicide

Alexandre Baril

Temple University Press, 2023

In Undoing Suicidism, Alexandre Baril argues that suicidal people are oppressed by what he calls structural suicidism, a hidden oppression that, until now, has been unnamed and under-theorized. Each year, suicidism and its preventionist script and strategies reproduce violence and cause additional harm and death among suicidal people through forms of criminalization, incarceration, discrimination, stigmatization, and pathologization. This is particularly true for marginalized groups experiencing multiple oppressions, including queer, trans, disabled, or Mad people. 
 
Undoing Suicidism questions the belief that the best way to help suicidal people is through the logic of prevention. Alexandre Baril presents the thought-provoking argument that supporting assisted suicide for suicidal people could better prevent unnecessary deaths. Offering a new queercrip model of (assisted) suicide, he invites us to imagine what could happen if we started thinking about (assisted) suicide from an anti-suicidist and intersectional framework. 
 
Baril provides a radical reconceptualization of (assisted) suicide and invaluable reflections for academics, activists, practitioners, and policymakers.
 
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