Negotiating euthanasia: Civil society contesting ‘the completed life’

Bernhard Weicht,Bernhard Forchtner

doi:10.1177/00113921211048525

Abstract

Autonomy and independence have become crucial elements of end-of-life decision making. Opinions on the latter are, however, strongly contested in public discourses. This contribution analyses arguments in favour of and against a Dutch civil society initiative which promotes the extension of the legislation on euthanasia. The authors investigate Dutch newspapers associated with three groups: religious, liberal and humanist perspectives, and do so by utilising quantitative and qualitative elements from a discourse-analytical perspective, raising the following questions: Which stances can be identified? How do different parties position themselves with regard to a ‘completed life’ and a ‘good death’? To what extent do these positions create demarcations between ‘us’ and ‘them’? The authors show that the debate developed along the lines of three key topoi: the topos of autonomy, the topos of human worth and the topos of embeddedness. The authors thereby identify how the different discursive positions define different visions of dying as ‘legitimate’ and as a proper end to a completed life.

Highlights

In The Loneliness of Dying, Norbert Elias (1985) speaks of the increasingly monadic nature of today’s individuals, emphasising our relation to dying as a thoroughly social one
Norwood (2007) argues that the possibility to openly talk about euthanasia provides people the opportunity to engage with their close relations more honestly since the practice of euthanasia is not an individual decision but is profoundly influenced by conversations with one’s loved ones. Humanists in these discourses do not deny the widespread wish for end-oflife measures; they criticise, that these debates are stimulated by the limited resources and the ‘normalisation’ of the wish to die through an uncritical and unreflective debate. In this contribution we have investigated how the discourse on euthanasia and assisted suicide shape modern subjectivities and how the construction of the latter leads to reinterpretations of a completed life and the good death
Drawing on insights from the preliminary quantitative analysis we examined the discourse via its three key dimensions, responding to the who, the what and the how

Summary

Introduction

In The Loneliness of Dying, Norbert Elias (1985) speaks of the increasingly monadic nature of today’s individuals, emphasising our relation to dying as a thoroughly social one. Choice but the ‘ultimate humiliation of reason and control’, in late modernity even death has become a site for individualism in which modern subjectivities need to assert themselves (Exley, 2004). The modalities of self-directed dying have become a contested issue, especially in relation to euthanasia and assisted suicide. In many Western countries, civil society actors demand the right to decide over one’s death. In the United Kingdom groups such as Dignity in Dying advocate for patients’ right to take end-of-life decisions. Other European countries such as Switzerland, the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg have already legalised euthanasia, under various restricting conditions. As self-chosen death becomes part of one’s potential choices in life, debates on what constitutes the good death become crucial issues of public concern

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Conclusion