February 24, 2006

Assisted Suicide and Disability

To the Editor:

In "Life, Death, and Biocultural Literacy" (The Chronicle Review, January 6), Lennard J. Davis misunderstands disability-studies scholars' perspective on assisted suicide. Far from siding with right-to-lifers, many of the scholars supported assisted suicide, then reluctantly changed their minds. And rather than promoting an essentialist identity politics, their critical-realist analysis examines the historically contingent categories of sick, disabled, and normal, and