@article{ref1,
title="Institutionalizing inequality: The physical criterion of assisted suicide",
journal="Christian bioethics",
year="2018",
author="Elliot, D.",
volume="24",
number="1",
pages="17-37",
abstract="The recent legalization of assisted dying in California, along with similar bills before other states, returned assisted suicide to the national spotlight. In Anglo-American dying bills, two criteria restrict eligibility for assisted suicide: (1) the uncoerced request to die (roughly, the &quot;autonomy&quot; criterion) and (2) severely deteriorated health of a certain kind (roughly, the &quot;physical&quot; criterion) from a six-month terminal illness (US jurisdictions) to severe and irreversible conditions (the Netherlands, Belgium). I argue that the physical criterion in any form violates the equality of respect and moral status of a large class of people, thereby degrading them, and I supplement this with theological considerations drawn from Thomas Aquinas. Even if the slope were not slippery and the autonomy firewall prevented Dutch-style mission creep, the physical criterion itself degrades tens of thousands of sick, disabled, and dying people by insinuating that their lives-but crucially, not other people's-are &quot;objectively&quot; the sort of thing they might reasonably want to dispose of. © The Author(s) 2018. Published by Oxford University Press, on behalf of The Journal of Christian Bioethics, Inc. All rights reserved.<p /><p>Language: en</p>",
language="en",
issn="1380-3603",
doi="10.1093/cb/cbx017",
url="http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/cb/cbx017"
}