Day: September 15, 2016

Karen Warren on facing death and considering options

Sam B3 Comments

Eco-feminist philosopher Karen Warren has been diagnosed with a terminal illness.

In a moving piece in Psychology Today, she writes,

This was the start of my personal journey confronting death. As a philosophy professor for nearly 40 years with an expertise in ethics, I often lectured about euthanasia. So, I am quite aware of arguments for and against various end-of-life options. But I never anticipated that my academic expertise would turn into a lived experience: Every day I watch myself deteriorate from a fatal and excruciatingly painful disease. And every day I do so knowing that I cannot legally choose to end my life before I become immobile. Because in my home state—Minnesota—it is illegal to help someone die.

The crux of the debate about aid-in-dying options centers around medical ethics. Physicians take an oath to help their patients and “do no harm.” Many interpret this oath as requiring that patients be kept alive at all costs. The goal of the medical community is to make us live as long as we possibly can—even when our body would long be gone without medical equipment and our quality of life is next-to-nothing.

See more here.

Katherine Hawley on Kristie Dotson

jennysaul

in Psychology Today.

 

Misunderstandings can sometimes occur despite everyone’s best efforts. But this becomes an ethical issue when the audience really should have known better, when open eyes and open ears would have allowed them to empathize more, and acknowledge that they don’t have the full picture. Professor Dotson writes movingly of ways in which black women, in particular, can be on the receiving end of such avoidable but harmful misunderstandings. As she points out, this can lead women to self-censor, because silence seems preferable to routine dismissal or rejection.   Dotson calls this ‘testimonial smothering’ – a reminder that although it may seem like self-censorship, it arises from anticipation of others’ negligence.