How the Mantra of Informed Consent in the Canadian Assisted Dying Debate Obscures Somatic Oppression

Abstract

This JOTWELL contribution reviews Jonas-Sébastien Beaudry's paper "Somatic Oppression and Relational Autonomy: Revisiting Medical Aid in Dying through a Feminist Lens". Beaudry, so the commentary puts forward, gives us an insightful sketch of how societal attitudes towards disability, ageing and struggling with illness may concretely interfere with people’s ability to make autonomous decisions, and particularly so in the context of a seriously constrained health care context. Beaudry’s analysis should inspire a questioning of the expressivist impact of a legislative endorsement of the medical profession’s role in actively ending the lives of people with disabilities who are otherwise not close to death, based on inherently complex concepts of autonomy and suffering. Canadian law now explicitly endorses in legislation the perception (a self-perception but one which clearly—as convincingly argued by Beaudry—is influenced by context and other-perception) that a life with disability is more likely unbearable, lacking in dignity, and without further purpose, than the lives of others.