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Zusatztext . . . this fine wrought history will prove fascinating and rewarding reading not only for those involved in the euthanasia debate on all sides, but also for those studying the interrelationship between ethics, law and society. Ian Dowbiggin is Professor of History at the University of Prince Edward Island. Klappentext While it may seem that debates over euthanasia began with Jack Kervorkian! the practice of mercy killing extends back to Ancient Greece and beyond. In America! the debate has raged for well over a century. Now! in A Merciful End! Ian Dowbiggin offers the first full-scale historical account of one of the most controversial reform movements in America. Drawing on unprecedented access to the archives of the Euthanasia Society of America! interviews with important figures in the movement today! andflashpoint cases such as the tragic fate of Karen Ann Quinlan! Dowbiggin tells the dramatic story of the men and women who struggled throughout the twentieth century to change the nation's attitude--and its laws--regarding mercy killing. In tracing the history of the euthanasia movement! hedocuments its intersection with other progressive social causes: women's suffrage! birth control! abortion rights! as well as its uneasy pre-WWII alliance with eugenics. Such links brought euthanasia activists into fierce conflict with Judeo-Christian institutions who worried that "the right to die"might become a "duty to die." Indeed! Dowbiggin argues that by joining a sometimes overzealous quest to maximize human freedom with a desire to "improve" society! the euthanasia movement has been dogged by the fear that mercy killing could be extended to persons with disabilities! handicappednewborns! unconscious geriatric patients! lifelong criminals! and even the poor. Justified or not! such fears have stalled the movement! as more and more Americans now prefer better end-of-life care than wholesale changes in euthanasia laws. For anyone trying to decide whether euthanasia offers a humanealternative to prolonged suffering or violates the "sanctity of life!" A Merciful End provides fascinating and much-needed historical context. Zusammenfassung How did today's debate over euthanasia (taken from the Greek word for 'good death') become so divisive in American society? In A Merciful End Ian Dowbiggin tells, for the first time, the dramatic story of those reformers who struggled throughout the twentieth century to change the nation's attitudes towards mercy killing and assisted suicide.Having had access to confidential records in the United States, England and Canada, and having interviewed leading figures in the American euthanasia movement, he reveals that euthanasia has been a contentious issue in America for over a century, long before Jack Kevorkian began helping patients to die. Over the course of the twentieth century, a group of public-spirited men and women tried to break down ancient Judeo-Christian prohibitions against mercy killing, overturn state laws criminalizing assisted suicide, and convince the US Supreme Court that there is a right to die in the Constitution. In their eagerness to succeed, these euthanasia advocates have often sanctioned public policies that blur the fine line between choice and duty, freedom and coercion, the rights of the individual and the needs of society. By the dawn of the twenty-first century, they had won some small victories, and the debate over whose lives were worth living still raged, but Dowbiggin argues that more and more Americans seemed to prefer better end-of-life care to sweeping changes in laws about euthanasia. America's euthanasia movement entered the twenty-first century ready and willing to fight new wars but facing an uphill battle against sentiments such as these.Original, wide-ranging in scope, but sensitive to the personal dimensions of euthanasia, A Merciful End is an illuminating and cautionary account of the tension be...
