Lives Not Worth Living in Modern Euthanasia Regimes

The authors of The Quiet Progress of the New Eugenics (QPNE) assert that some current practices, such as euthanasia and/or assisted suicide (EAS) for disabled newborns, imply that some persons with disabilities have lives that are not worth living. I extend the QPNE's analysis in this commentary by exploring whether even in voluntary EAS for unbearable suffering, the question of how we value the lives of disabled persons arises in a way that deserves more public discussion. I argue that the old and modern EAS regimes both create a class of persons whose lives are deemed by society as not worth living. I explain how the modern EAS regime's public goal of relieving suffering and its requirement for autonomous choice obscure but do not erase this fact. Although modern EAS regimes are based on suffering (not eugenics) and voluntary (not state coerced), they have the effect of creating lives that are societally deemed to be not worth living.