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The Case Against Assisted Suicide Reexamined, Ani B. Satz

Michigan Law Review

In Toni Morrison's acclaimed novel Beloved, Sethe, a runaway slave woman on the brink of capture, gruesomely murders one of her infant children and is halted seconds before killing the second. Cognizant of the approaching men, Sethe's actions are deliberate, swift, confident, and unflinching. Afterwards, she sits erect in the Sheriff's wagon. The reader is left to struggle, situating the horror of the event within the context of the reality of slavery. Was this an act of mercy tQ prevent the suffering Sethe's child would know as a slave? Is loss of autonomy, even rising to the condition of slavery, …