Portraits of Assisted Suicide

PLAIN LANGUAGE SUMMARY

The following text is a representation of a series of interviews I conducted in the summer of 2019. At the start of my research with individuals travelling from the United Kingdom to Switzerland to choose assisted suicide, I had connected with a local branch of the campaigning organization “My Death, My Decision.” The portraits that follow tell stories of separate individuals linked by a desire to experience a similar kind of death. This text explores the theme of assisted dying, and, more importantly, it explores the people who I met that summer. In no means is this text meant to be representative of the right-to-die movement as a whole. I am eternally grateful to all those who took part in my fieldwork.

Keywords:

• dying
• touch
• care
• self
• aging

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 After I met with an MDMD member, Elizabeth, she emailed me this poem. It is from a collection of poems displayed in the London Underground. Elizabeth wrote that she thought that the words resonated with our discussion after she had made a comment about leaving our bodies behind when we die.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Miranda Tuckett

Miranda Tuckett is an anthropologist working on topics of death, intimacy, and aesthetics. Her PhD at The New School for Social Research focuses on care, touch, and assisted dying in the United Kingdom. From February 2021 to February 2022, Miranda was immersed in the lives and deaths of individuals who travelled from the UK to Switzerland for an assisted death. She worked, in particular, with five people, three of whom are now dead. When she started her research in February 2021, Miranda wanted to know what the effects of assisted dying would be on care itself. What, she asked, did it mean to ask doctors and loved ones to help you die? In her dissertation, she examines how new spaces and ethics of care are emerging when confronting death with assistance.