by Karen Hwang

About the author: Karen Hwang, a spinal cord injury survivor since 1988, is working toward a Ph.D. in counseling psychology at Rutgers University and is a research assistant at the Kessler Institute of Rehabilitation in West Orange, New Jersey.

Assisted suicide is again in the news, and it’s not likely ever to go away until we accept it. That’s a pretty sweeping statement. People sometimes ask me how, as a person with a disability, I can be such an ardent supporter of Dr. Kevorkian and the legalization of assisted suicide. Don’t I care about discrimination against the disabled"

Aren’t I helping to contribute to the public myth that a life of illness or disability is a fate worse than death? Do I want to...