Euthanasia and Disability: Comments on "What Should We Do for Jay?"

In his paper, Turnbull raises an important but often unrecognized point, which is that there are certain limitations to what rights can do for us. He introduces the notions of "trust" and "compassion" in order to indicate the kind of limitation he has in mind. While I am sympathetic to his general position at this point-there are certain concerns in the ethical domain that cannot be properly addressed by the notion of rights-I think the author owes his readers a more explicit explanantion about what it is that rights cannot do in the particular case he presents us with. Thinking about this case, Turnbull finds himself trapped in a paradox, which leads him to believe he must move beyond rights claims. The paraadox, as he describes it, is that if we stick to rights claims in order to protect people with disabilities against various kinds of discrimination in the context of health care, they might end up in a situation where neither they nor we want them to be. Copyright © by The Haworth Press, Inc. All rights reserved.