ABSTRACT
Philosophers engaging in bioethical questions about what constitutes life worth living often imagine a subject whose cognitive and physical disabilities are so “severe” that she is not able to communicate, move, or show signs of consciousness. This imagined subject is a being who needs to be fed, cleaned, kept warm, moved, and cared for, but lacks any other sign of “humanity,” such as self-consciousness, autonomy, rationality, or even sentience. One wonders, is this a human life? The utilitarian philosopher Peter Singer posed this question to Harriet McBryde Johnson in their debate about the worthwhile life: “Let’s assume we can prove, absolutely, that the individual is totally unconscious and that we can know, absolutely, that the individual will never regain consciousness. Assuming all that, don’t you think continuing to take care of that individual would be a bit—weird?” (quoted in Johnson 2003, 55). Disability studies scholars have defended the unqualified category of “human being” and argue on the side of caution, urging the inclusion of every human born, so that past catastrophes might be avoided, and condemning genocide committed in the name of the “subhuman” status of certain groups of people (Bérubé 2008). Given that the expansion of rights to sentient nonhuman animals in Singer’s argument has not necessarily ensured the recognition of some individuals with disabilities as human beings, disability studies scholars have been understandably reluctant to step outside of the boundary of human beings. As Michael Bérubé (2009) argues in response to Singer: “Better, I think, to add some animals to the category of rights-bearing entities without kicking any humans out. It needn’t be a zero-sum affair” (363).
